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The Pointsman: Maxwell’s Demon, Victorian Free Will, and the Boundaries of Science
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 69, Number 3, July 2008
- pp. 467-491
- 10.1353/jhi.0.0001
- Article
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This article discusses the writings of the devout Christian physicist James Clerk Maxwell (best known for his epochal work in electromagnetism and statistical mechanics) on the concept of conscious free-will. To Maxwell a correct understanding of free will, as personified in the example of the railway pointsman, was essential to clear conceptions of both man as a religious creature and of the limits of science. Understanding human volition, then, was not an end unto itself. It was a foundation on which one could build reliable theories of man and matter.