Owing to the book's discursive style and attempt to present complex ideas in straightforward language, it has long been studied for what it reveals about Maxwell's style of thought, in particular his use of analogies in physical explanation. Joseph Turner, for example, discussed the Elementary Treatise in his 1955 paper 'Maxwell on the Method of Physical Analogy'. More recently, Alisa Bukolic points out that in the Elementary Treatise "Maxwell distinguishes sharply between the relations between the phenomena and the phenomena themselves". This has important consequences for Maxwell's views on scientific explanation: "it is clear that Maxwell does not take his physical analogies and fictional models to be explanatory in the straightforward sense of providing a literal mechanistic or causal explanation".