Mathematics
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Mathematics is the body of knowledge centered on concepts such as quantity, structure, space, and change, and the academic discipline which studies them. It evolved, through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, from counting, calculation, measurement, and the study of the shapes and motions of physical objects. Mathematicians explore such concepts, aiming to formulate new conjectures and establish their truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions.
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- Any author who uses mathematics should always express in ordinary language the meaning of the assumptions he admits, as well as the significance of the results obtained. The more abstract his theory, the more imperative this obligation. In fact, mathematics are and can only be a tool to explore reality. In this exploration, mathematics do not constitute an end in itself, they are and can only be a means.
- Maurice Allais, La formation scientifique, Une communication du Prix Nobel d’économie, Maurice Allais, address to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (1997).
- 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.
- If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics.
- Roger Bacon Opus Majus, bk.1, ch4.
- 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 so on.- Augustus De Morgan, A Budget of Paradoxes
- I shall here present the view that numbers, even whole numbers, are words, parts of speech, and that mathematics is their grammar. Numbers were therefore invented by people in the same sense that language, both written and spoken, was invented. Grammar is also an invention. Words and numbers have no existence separate from the people who use them. Knowledge of mathematics is transmitted from one generation to another, and it changes in the same slow way that language changes. Continuity is provided by the process of oral or written transmission.
- Carl Eckart, Our Modern Idol: Mathematical Science (1984), p. 95
- Mathematics has the dubious honor of being the least popular subject in the curriculum ... Future teachers pass through the elementary schools learning to detest mathematics. They drop it in high school as early as possible. They avoid it in teachers' colleges because it is not required. They return to the elementary school to teach a new generation to detest it.
- Report of the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, N. J., as quoted in TIME magazine (18 June 1956), cited by George Pólya, How to Solve It, Page ix in Expanded Princeton Science Library Edition (2004), ISBN 0-691-11966-X
- 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
- 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 something that you find lying around in your back yard. It’s produced by the human mind. Yet if we ask where mathematics works best, it is in areas like particle physics and astrophysics, areas of fundamental science that are very, very far removed from everyday affairs.
- Paul Davies, How Unique You Are!; Is There a Creator Who Cares About You?, published by Jehovah's Witnesses.
- It suggests to me that consciousness and our ability to do mathematics are no mere accident, no trivial detail, no insignificant by-product of evolution.
- Paul Davies, Are We Alone?
- The idea that theorems follow from the postulates does not correspond to simple observation. If the Pythagorean theorem were found to not follow from the postulates, we would again search for a way to alter the postulates until it was true. Euclid's postulates came from the Pythagorean theorem, not the other way around.
- Richard Hamming, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics", The American Mathematical Monthly 87 (2), February 1980, pp. 81-90
- Mathematics is the language of size, shape and order and that it is an essential part of the equipment of an intelligent citizen to understand this language. If the rules of mathematics are the rules of grammar, there is no stupidity involved when we fail to see that a mathematical truth is obvious. The rules of ordinary grammar are not obvious. They have to be learned. They are not eternal truths. They are conveniences without whose aid truths about the sorts of things in the world cannot be communicated from one person to another.
- Lancelot Hogben, Mathematics for the Million (1936)
- 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.
- It is a well-known experience that the only truly enjoyable and profitable way of studying mathematics is the method of "filling in details" by one's own efforts.
- Cornelius Lanczos, Applied Analysis, Prentice-Hall, 1956
- [Mathematics is] the science that draws necessary conclusions.
- Benjamin Peirce, "Linear Associative Algebra", American Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 4, No. 1/4 (1881).
- Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.
- Pythagoras, as quoted in Life of Pythagoras (c. 300) by Iamblichus of Chalcis, as translated by Thomas Taylor (1818)
- Variants:
- Number rules the universe.
- As quoted in The Story Of A Number (1905) by E. Maor; also in Comic Sections (1993) by Desmond MacHale
- There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.
- Pythagoras, as quoted in The Mystery of Matter (1965) edited by Louise B. Young
- 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
- 1050 is a long way from infinity.
- Daniel Shanks, Solved and Unsolved Problems in Number Theory, 3rd edition, chapter IV, page 217.
- Computer calculation even up to a big number can't really say much about asymptotic behaviour.
- I discovered the works of Euler and my perception of the nature of mathematics underwent a dramatic transformation. I was de-Bourbakized, stopped believing in sets, and was expelled from the Cantorian paradise. I still believe in abstraction, but now I know that one ends with abstraction, not starts with it. I learned that one has to adapt abstractions to reality and not the other way around. Mathematics stopped being a science of theories but reappeared to me as a science of numbers and shapes.
- 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
- The Koch Curve - Triangles outside triangles outside triangles ad infinitum the Koch curve goes, it's infinitely infinitesimal, this self-similarity shows. A length too long to measure, an area too small to see, what else can this contradiction be, behold fractal geometry.
- Bernt Wahl, in The Adventures of the Fractal Explorer, about the beauty of Fractal Geometry
- By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.
- Alfred North Whitehead, quoted in Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematical Notations (1929), Vol. 2, p. 332
- 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, Time Enough For Love (1973), and again in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (1978)
[edit] Misattributed
- The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophesies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.
- Misattributed to Augustine of Hippo. This is a very bad mistranslation of De genesi ad litteram libri XII, book 2, 17.37. 'Mathematici' in Latin means astrologers, not mathematicians, and the book makes repeated attacks on astrology. The text really reads: For which reason both astrologers and those impiously making divinings, as the truth says emphatically, must be avoided by the good Christian, lest after making a pact of agreement they entangle their soul in a hidden partnership with demons.
