The Crystal Analogy: James Clerk Maxwell's Naturalist Idealism

Abstract: James Clerk Maxwell's 1856 essay "Are There Real Analogies in Nature?" asks whether analogies can be said to exist in nature or whether they are a construction of the human mind. I argue that Maxwell's answer to this question is articulated compellingly through an analogy he sets up between the structure of crystals and the structure of the human mind: like crystals, Maxwell suggests, which attain form in response to their environment, the mind is shaped by the natural world it tries to know. Paying attention to Maxwell's educational history and building on more recent philosophy, I argue that his essay cultivates a "naturalist idealism" that seeks to mend the ontological gap between mind and matter instituted by an earlier generation of Cambridge scientists. As such, I stress the extent to which naturalism and idealism—although often thought of as opposing positions in the history of philosophy—could in fact be deeply complementary in Victorian scientific culture.