Quotes About Mathematics

And in this way was born the concept, central to all mathematics and science, of proof.

Pythagoras of Samos, in the later sixth century BCE

The conceptual shift that made it possible was even simpler than the application of binary mathematics to electrical circuits.

All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.

Neglect of mathematics work injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or things of this world. And what is worst, those who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance, and so do not seek a remedy.

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...

If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundation of knowledge in mathematics.

This book is about physics and its about physics and its relationship with mathematics and how they seem to be intimately related and to what extent can you explore this relationship and trust it.

We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.

No doubt there are some who, when confronted with a line of mathematical symbols, however simply presented, can only see the face of a stern parent or teacher who tried to force into them a non-comprehending parrot-like apparent competence--a duty and a duty alone--and no hint of magic or beauty of the subject might be allowed to come through.

Objective mathematical notions must be thought of as timeless entities and are not to be regarded as being conjured into existence at the moment that they are first humanly perceived.

Mathematical truth is not determined arbitrarily by the rules of some 'man-made' formal system, but has an absolute nature, and lies beyond any such system of specifiable rules.

If you come from mathematics, as I do, you realize that there are many problems, even classical problems, which cannot be solved by computation alone

In some Platonic sense, the natural numbers seem to be things that have an absolute conceptual existence independent of ourselves.

How is that perceiving beings can arise from out of the physical world, and how is that mentality is able seemingly to 'create' mathematical concepts out of some kind of mental model.

What Godel and Rosser showed is that the consistency of a (sufficiently extensive) formal system is something that lies outside the power of the formal system itself to establish.

It is in mathematics that our thinking processes have their purest form.

Mathematical truth is not determined arbitrarily by the rules of some 'man-made' formal system, but has an absolute nature, and lies beyond any such system of specifiable rules. Support for the Platonic viewpoint ...was an important part of Godel's initial motivations.

The odd belief prevails in our culture that a thing or experience is not real if we cannot make it mathematical, and somehow it must be real if we can reduce it to numbers. But this means making an abstraction out of it - mathematics is the abstract par excellence, which is indeed its glory and the reason for its great usefulness.

She had a horror of mathematics, as she found that numbers had the annoying habit of proclaiming that two and two are four, which to her seemed somehow contrary to the very spirit of Poland.

Maandag stierf hij, 102 jaar oud: Ronald Coase, de man die zijn afkeer van de wiskundige modellen in de economie aldus formuleerde: 'Als je de gegevens maar lang genoeg martelt, zullen ze toegeven'.

Math is sometimes called the science of patterns.

What Juggie said, "They're looking after us," echoed what Zhaanat had said about these lights being the spirits of the dead, joyous, free, benevolent. Even cold to the bone, Millie watched them for a while longer, deciding one explanation did not rule out the other, that charged electrons could be spirits, that nothing ruled out anything else, that mathematics was a rigorous form of madness

There can never be surprises in logic.