Figures of Thought: A Literary Appreciation of Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
Here, at last, is an answer to those who think mathematical physics has nothing to do with poetics. Although Thomas K. Simpson's Figures of Thought is modestly billed as an "appreciation" of James Clerk Maxwell's monumental Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873), it is really a tour-de-force reading, one that lavishes on the Treatise the sort of scrupulous formal attention usually reserved for the masterpieces of Western literature. Simpson thinks Maxwell's Treatise, in fact, is literature and he wants you to see it that way too. A trained classicist as well as a physicist, Simpson looks closely at ten chapters of book 4 of the Treatise, showing how Maxwell introduced rhetorical figures and tropes to articulate and formalize his intuitions about the electromagnetic field. Simpson's presentation of the relevant rhetorical, poetic, mathematical, and physical concepts is clear and graceful. . . . Historians looking for a novel approach to Maxwell, or to mathematical physics in general, will find much that is provocative and interesting here; those interested in the rhetoric of science may be surprised to discover just how rhetorical the mathematical sciences can be. In its attention to the nuances of Maxwell's thought, Simpson's book recalls Jed Z. Buchwald's From Maxwell to Microphysics (Chicago, 1985) and Daniel Siegel's Innovation in Maxwell's Electromagnetic Theory (Cambridge, 1991). But while Buchwald and Siegel restrict their studies to Maxwell's physics, Simpson wants to show how Maxwell's Treatise is, in its rhetorical complexity, on a par with such touchstones of Western civilization as the Oresteia. Simpson's genius is that, by the end of the book, we believe him. DIANE GRECO JOSEFOWICZ --Isis June 2007