“I work with a lot of mathematicians, and one thing I notice about them is that they are not particularly fast with numbers; in fact some of them are rather slow. This is not a bad thing; they are slow because they think deeply and carefully about mathematics.” ThinkingFactsNumbersOne ThingMathematicsBad ThingsMathematician Author:Jo Boaler
“The idea of an isolated American painting , so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd... And in another sense, the problem doesn't exist at all; or, if it did, would solve itself: An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not. But the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country.” IfsIdeasCountryFactsProblemSeemsPaintingMathematicsIndependentSolvePhysicsContemporaryAbsurdIsolatedQualified Book:Jackson Pollock, 1912-1956 Source: Jackson Pollock, 1912-1956
“Mathematics is a presuppositionless science. To found it I do not need God, as does Kronecker, or the assumption of a special faculty of our understanding attuned to the principle of mathematical induction, as does Poincaré, or the primal intuition of Brouwer, or, finally, as do Russell and Whitehead, axioms of infinity, reducibility, or completeness, which in fact are actual, contentual assumptions that cannot be compensated for by consistency proofs.” NeedsDoeFactsFoundUnderstandingPrinciplesSpecialMathematicsIntuitionProofMathematicalAssumptionFacultyInfinityConsistencyPrimalAxiomsCompletenessNeed God Author:David Hilbert