Science appears to us with a very different aspect after we have found out that it is not in lecture rooms only, and by means of the electric light projected on a screen, that we may witness physical phenomena, but that we may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.
Interpretation
Science is present in everyday life and natural phenomena, not just in classrooms.
James Clerk Maxwell emphasizes that science is not confined to theoretical teaching or lectures; instead, it permeates our daily experiences and the natural world. By observing various forms of motion—whether in games, travel, or the elements—we can appreciate scientific principles in action, revealing its relevance and beauty beyond academic settings.
In practice
This quote could inspire a classroom discussion on the role of science in everyday life.
... that, in a few years, all great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.
Very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies.
What's the go of that? What's the particular go of that?
I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.
If we betake ourselves to the statistical method, we do so confessing that we are unable to follow the details of each individual case, and expecting that the effects of widespread causes, though very different in each individual, will produce an average result on the whole nation, from a study of which we may estimate the character and propensities of an imaginary being called the Mean Man.
The student who uses home made apparatus, which is always going wrong, often learns more than one who has the use of carefully adjusted instruments, to which he is apt to trust and which he dares not take to pieces.
If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn't been tested or it has failed its tests.
Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise: So pleas'd at first, the towring Alps we try.
Mathematics compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them.
Every cell in our body, whether it's a bacterial cell or a human cell, has a genome. You can extract that genome - it's kind of like a linear tape - and you can read it by a variety of methods. Similarly, like a string of letters that you can read, you can also change it. You can write, you can edit it, and then you can put it back in the cell.
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