Home / Quotes / Quote by Arthur Cayley

Quote by Arthur Cayley

“Euclid avoids it [the treatment of the infinite]; in modern mathematics it is systematically introduced, for only then is generality obtained.”

Quote by Arthur Cayley

Author

Arthur Cayley was a British mathematician renowned for his contributions to algebra and geometry, which had a profound impact on the development of modern mathematics. more

You May Also Like

“For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics?”

Philosophy Science Answers Experience Mathematics Active Sensual Scholar Layman

Author:Richard Courant

“Greek mathematics is the real thing. The Greeks first spoke a language which modern mathematicians can understand... So Greek mathematics is 'permanent', more permanent even than Greek literature.”

Firsts Real Science Literature Language Understanding Modern Mathematics Permanent Greek Spokes Mathematician Real Things

Book:A Mathematician's Apology

Source: A Mathematician's Apology

“Having been the discoverer of many splendid things, he is said to have asked his friends and relations that, after his death, they should place on his tomb a cylinder enclosing a sphere, writing on it the proportion of the containing solid to that which is contained.”

Should Writing Said Science Relation Mathematics Proportion Spheres Splendid Geometry Tombs Containing Cylinders

Author:Archimedes

“How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?”

Humans Reality Science Objects Products Mathematics Independent Mathematical Appropriate Human Thought Independent Thought Mathematics And Science

Book:A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein

Source: A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein

“I also ask you my friends not to condemn me entirely to the mill of mathematical calculations, and allow me time for philosophical speculations, my only pleasures.”

Philosophy Science Asks Pleasure My Friends Philosophical Mathematics Mathematical Speculation Calculations Mills

Author:Johannes Kepler

“I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.”

Art Creativity Creative Mathematics Mathematical Creative Art

Book:A Mathematician's Apology

Source: A Mathematician's Apology

“I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our "creations," are simply the notes of our observations.”

Source: A Mathematician's Apology

“I confess, that very different from you, I do find sometimes scientific inspiration in mysticism ... but this is counterbalanced by an immediate sense for mathematics.”

Different Sometimes Inspiration Mathematics Mysticism

Book:Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. Band IV, Teil III: 1955–1956. Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Volume IV, Part III: 1955–1956

Source: Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. Band IV, Teil III: 1955–1956. Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Volume IV, Part III: 1955–1956

“I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world... Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil; and outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow. I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of complete triviality, that I may be judged to have created something worth creating. And that I have created something is undeniable: the question is about its value.”

“I never could do anything with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in that, as soon as I reach nine times seven- [He lapsed into deep thought, trying to figure nine times seven. Mr. McKelway whispered the answer to him.] I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage a statistic.”