Electricity Quotes - page 12

Bacon in his instruction tells us that the scientific student ought not to be as the ant, who gathers merely, nor as the spider who spins from her own bowels, but rather as the bee who both gathers and produces. All this is true of the teaching afforded by any part of physical science. Electricity is often called wonderful, beautiful; but it is so only in common with the other forces of nature. The beauty of electricity or of any other force is not that the power is mysterious, and unexpected, touching every sense at unawares in turn, but that it is under law, and that the taught intellect can even now govern it largely. The human mind is placed above, and not beneath it, and it is in such a point of view that the mental education afforded by science is rendered super-eminent in dignity, in practical application and utility; for by enabling the mind to apply the natural power through law, it conveys the gifts of God to man. (Michael Faraday)
Maxwell... mastered electricity and magnetism, light and heat, pretty much mopping up all the major areas of physics beyond those that Newton had... taken care of-gravitation and the laws of motion. ...Maxwell detected an essential shortcoming in Newton's laws of motion, too. They worked... for macroscopic objects, like cannonballs and rocks. But what about the submicroscopic molecules from which such objects were made? ...Newton's laws ...did you no good because you could not possibly trace the motion of an individual molecule ...Maxwell applied the sort of statistical thinking that Quetelet had promoted. View quote
James Clerk Maxwell
Fossil fuels allowed the human race to operate... complex systems at gigantic scales. Renewable energy sources are not compatible with those systems and scales. Renewables will not be able to take the place of oil and gas in running those systems. The systems themselves will have to go. Even many "environmentalists” and "greens” of our day seem to think that all we have to do is switch inputs. Instead of running all the air conditioners of Houston on oil- or gas-generated electricity, we'll use wind farms or massive solar arrays; we'll have super-fuel-efficient cars and keep on commuting over the interstate highway system. It isn't going to happen. The wish to keep running the same giant systems at [a] gigantic scale using renewables is the heart of our illusions about solar, wind, and waterpower. View quote
James Howard Kunstler
The double-think of modern science-'Molecules shape the body, but electricity shapes the mind'-ends abruptly with the realization that regulatory hormones control both brain and body functions. View quote
Richard Bergland