Mathematics

About Mathematics

Notable quotes

“Rather like the way the Hubble Space Telescope has made a significant contribution to astronomy in enabling astronomers to discover hidden structures and properties of our distant universe, dynamic geometry software has allowed new worlds to become viewable and tangible in mathematics and particularly in geometry.”
— Hussein Abdelfatah, Hussein Abdelfatah Ph.D., Karlsruhe Germany (2011).
““There’s more to life than mathematics,” Joan said. “But not much more.””
— Greg Egan, Glory (2007) in Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (eds.) The New Space Opera (mass market paperback edition, ), p. 126
“[E]ven in the most precise part of science, in mathematics, we cannot avoid using concepts that involve contradictions. ...[I]t is well known that the concept of infinity leads to contradictions that have been analyzed, but it would be practically impossible to construct the main parts of mathematics without this concept.”
— Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (1958) p. 175. Lectures delivered at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, Winter 1955-56.
“In their field they [mathematicians] do what we ought to be doing in ours. Therein lies the significant lesson … of their existence. They are an analogy for the intellectual of the future.”
— Robert Musil, “Mathematical man” (1913).
“Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.”
— William Thomson, as quoted by Silvanus Phillips Thompson, The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs (1910) Vol. 2, p. 1124.
“The number 2 thought of by one man cannot be added to the number 2 thought of by another man so us to make up the number 4.”
— Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty (1958), p. 82.

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.