“Numbers exist only in our minds. There is no physical entity
that is number 1. If there were, 1 would be
in a place of honor in some great museum of science, and past it would
file a steady stream of mathematicians gazing at 1 in wonder and awe”.
Linear Algebra by Fraleigh/Beauregard
"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite
'em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so
ad infinitum, and the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to
go on,While these again have greater still, and greater still, and soon."
Augustus De Morgan, A Budget of Paradoxes
"So, nat'ralists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey, And these have smaller still to bite 'em And so proceed ad infinitum"
Jonathan Swift, On Poetry: A Rhapsody
“A man with all the algebra in the world is often only an ass
when he knows nothing else. Perhaps in ten
years society may derive advantage from the curves which these visionary
algebraists will have laboriously squared. I congratulate posterity
beforehand. But to tell you the truth I see nothing but a scientific
extravagance in all these calculations. That which is neither useful nor
agreeable is worthless. And as for useful things, they have all been
discovered; and to those which are agreeable, I hope that good taste will
not admit algebra among them”.
Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and
Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 93 from
Frederick to Voltaire,
16 May 1749.
“As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and
his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated
the movement of the heavenly
bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to to
maintain the existence of
Nothing”.
Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and
Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 221 from
Frederick to Voltaire,
25 November 1777.
“Euler calculated the force of the wheels necessary to raise the water in a reservoir … My mill was
carried out geometrically and could not
raise a drop of water fifty yards from the reservoir. Vanity of vanities!
Vanity of geometry!”
Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and
Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927),
transl. Richard Aldington, letter 221 from Frederick to Voltaire,
25 November 1777.
"Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared
highway, but
a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost. Rigour should be a signal to the historian
that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone
elsewhere."
W.S. Anglin, in Mathematics and History,
elucidating the symmetry between
the creative and logical aspects of mathematics.
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty —a beauty cold and
austere, like that of sculpture, without
appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of
painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection
such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the
exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of
the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as
poetry."
Bertrand Russell, in Study of Mathematics, about
the beauty of Mathematics
". . . from the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the
Great Architect
of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician."
Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, pg. 165.
A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a
black cat which isn't there. –
Charles Darwin
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully
human. At best he is a tolerable sub-human
who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the
house."
Robert Heinlein
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they
are not certain;
and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
Albert Einstein
No comments:
Post a Comment