Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by David Hilbert

Quote by David Hilbert

“Mathematical science is in my opinion an indivisible whole, an organism whose vitality is conditioned upon the connection of its parts.”

Quote by David Hilbert

Author

David Hilbert
David Hilbert

David Hilbert, a German mathematician born on January 23, 1862, and died on February 14, 1943, was one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. He is renowned for his contributions to the foundations of mathematics, geometry, number theory, and functional analysis. more

You May Also Like

“An axiomatic system establishes a reverberating relationship between what a mathematician assumes (the axioms) and what he or she can derive (the theorems). In the best of circumstances, the relationship is clear enough so that the mathematician can submit his or her reasoning to an informal checklist, passing from step to step with the easy confidence the steps are small enough so that he cannot be embarrassed nor she tripped up.”

“An axiomatic system comprises axioms and theorems and requires a certain amount of hand-eye coordination before it works. A formal system comprises an explicit list of symbols, an explicit set of rules governing their cohabitation, an explicit list of axioms, and, above all, an explicit list of rules explicitly governing the steps that the mathematician may take in going from assumptions to conclusions. No appeal to meaning nor to intuition. Symbols lose their referential powers; inferences become mechanical.”

“For the most part, it is true, ordinary men and women regard mathematics with energetic distaste, counting its concepts as rhapsodic as cauliflower. This is a mistake-there is no other word. Where else can the restless human mind find means to tie the infinite in a finite bow?”

“No one really understood music unless he was a scientist, her father had declared, and not just a scientist, either, oh, no, only the real ones, the theoreticians, whose language was mathematics. She had not understood mathematics until he had explained to her that it was the symbolic language of relationships. "And relationships," he had told her, "contained the essential meaning of life."”