Thoughts on Mathematics and
History.
The advancement and perfection of
mathematics are intimately connected with the prosperity of the State.
Napoleon
Bonaparte
In most sciences one generation tears down what another has built and what one
has established another undoes. In mathematics alone each generation adds a new
story to the old structure.
Hermann
Hankle
An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding
ages.
Bernard de
Fontenelle
Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other
problems.
Rene
Descartes
There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and
accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the
result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.
Alfred North
Whitehead
There is an astonishing imagination even in the science of mathematics ... We
repeat, there is far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of
Homer.
Voltaire
In Samoa, when elementary schools were first established, the natives developed
an absolute craze for arithmetical calculations. They laid aside their weapons
and were to be seen going about armed with slate and pencil, setting sums and
problems to one another and to European visitors. The Honourable Frederick
Walpole declares that his visit to the beautiful island was positively
embittered by ceaseless multiplication and division.
T. Briffault
The idea of the continuum seems simple to us. We have somehow lost sight of the
difficulties it implies ... We are told such a number as the square root of 2
worried Pythagoras and his school almost to exhaustion. Being used to such
queer numbers from early childhood, we must be careful not to form a low idea
of the mathematical intuition of these ancient sages; their worry was highly
credible.
Erwin
Schrödinger
Perhaps the most surprising thing about mathematics is that it is so
surprising. The rules which we make up at the beginning seem ordinary and
inevitable, but it is impossible to forsee their consequences. These have only
been found out by long study, extending over many centuries. Much of our
knowledge is due to a comparatively few great mathematicians such as Newton,
Euler, Gauss, or Tiemann; few careers can have been more satisfying than
theirs. They have contributed something to human thought even more lasting than
great literature, since it is independent of language.
Edward Charles
Titchmarsh
Today, it is not only that our kings do not know mathematics, but our
philosophers do not know mathematics.
Julius Robert
Oppenheimer
