MAXWELL,  James Clerk.  Mathematical and Physical Sciences–address to Section A of the British Association.  London:  1870.  1st edition.  Nature, vol 2, Sept 22, 1870  8vo.  Original printed wrappers.  Very good condition.  Maxwell addresses the British Science Association meeting in a long (for Nature) entry of about 4,000 words, over 4 pages. We offer the entire issue of 20pp, with their very scarce original wrappers, detached from a larger bound volume.      $225

What I find to be most interesting here is Maxwell pulling back the reins and directing the idea of clear scientific discourse by means of analogy. He does speak of “calculating” and “calculating machine”, which is referring to human calculators and not mechanical ones–the issue being that “spending a season” doing this stubborn and consuming work could turn the person occupied with in into a “machine”. He writes: 

“What the man of science, whether he be a mathematician or a physical inquirer, aims to do, to acquire and develop clear ideas of the things he deals with. For this purpose he is willing to enter on long calculations, and to be for a season a calculating machine., if he can only at last make his ideas clearer.”

“But if he finds that clear ideas are not obtained by the means of processes,  the steps of which he is sure to forget before he has reached the conclusion, it is much better that he should turn to another method, and try to understand the subject by well chosen illustrations derived from subjects with which he is more familiar.”

“We all know how much more popular the illustrative method of exposition is found, than that in which bare processes of reasoning and calculation form the principal subject of discourse…”