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Mathematical Quotes

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Mathematical Quotes

“Beaming into the thick of a tree without becoming a lifelong tree hugger was a tricky business. A precision job. Scrooby’s job at the Time Saving Agency was a tough one. Billions of lives depended on him not screwing up. Literally billions and billions. Once, he’d screwed up in only a very small way and people wore those little yellow smiley faces on t-shirts for decades afterwards – and that was just a small screw up. He sighed. Here he sat, in the branches of an apple tree in an apple tree orchard – and without a single apple in sight. Below him, Isaac was waiting to get bonked on the noggin with an apple so that he could fulfill history by toddling off to invent gravity and shape scientific and mathematical principles for generations to come. Only one problem – no apples.”

ProblemBecomingBillionsMathematicalSatJobToASmallLittleAndThatUpInForHimComeGetVerySoWithoutOnAppleThoseOnceOffBeamingSighedBelow HimDecades AfterwardsGenerations ToIn SightJob AtJust ANo ApplesOnly AScientific AndScrooby SSingle AppleThe BranchesTough OneTree OrchardTricky BusinessWaiting ToWas A
Author:Christina Engela
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“The actual infinite arises in three contexts: first when it is realized in the most complete form, in a fully independent otherworldly being, in Deo, where I call it the Absolute Infinite or simply Absolute; second when it occurs in the contingent, created world; third when the mind grasps it in abstracto as a mathematical magnitude, number or order type.”

WorldMindFirstsFormOrderThreeNumbersTypeLogicThirdsAbsolutesInfiniteIndependentAriseCertaintyMathematicalUncertaintyReasoningMagnitudeOntologyFinite Number
Author:Georg Cantor
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“But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.”

WorldWayYearsFallFoundLogicTwentiesConclusionSecureCertaintyMathematicalUncertaintyReasoningElephantsToilConstructsFablesOntologyTortoisesGreat Math
Book:Autobiography
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“It is difficult even to attach a precise meaning to the term "scientific truth." So different is the meaning of the word "truth" according to whether we are dealing with a fact of experience, a mathematical proposition or a scientific theory. "Religious truth" conveys nothing clear to me at all.”

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Book:Essays in Science
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“If you assume continuity, you can open the well-stocked mathematical toolkit of continuous functions and differential equations, the saws and hammers of engineering and physics for the past two centuries (and the foreseeable future).”

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Book:The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward
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“[Kepler] had to realize clearly that logical-mathematical theoretizing, no matter how lucid, could not guarantee truth by itself; that the most beautiful logical theory means nothing in natural science without comparison with the exactest experience. Without this philosophic attitude, his work would not have been possible.”

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Author:Albert Einstein
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“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

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Author:R. Buckminster Fuller
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“In that disputable point of persecuting men for conscience sake, I see such dreadful consequences rising, I would be as fully convinced of the truth of it, as a mathematical demonstration, before I would venture to act upon it or make it a part of my religion.”

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Book:The evidences of the Christian religion: with additional discourses on the following subjects, viz: Of God, and his attributes. The power and wisdom of God in the creation. The providence of God. The worship of God. Advantages of revelation above natural reason. Excellency of the Christian institution. Dignity of the Scripture language. Against atheism and infidelity. Against the modern free-thinkers. Immortality of the soul, and a future state. Death and judgment
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“In presenting a mathematical argument the great thing is to give the educated reader the chance to catch on at once to the momentary point and take details for granted: two trivialities omitted can add up to an impasse). The unpractised writer, even after the dawn of a conscience, gives him no such chance; before he can spot the point he has to tease his way through a maze of symbols of which not the tiniest suffix can be skipped.”

WayGivingTwoChanceReaderConscienceArgumentAddDetailsAccidentsGreat ThingsEducatedSpotsSymbolsGrantedMathematicalDawnPresentingTeaseMomentaryMazesTrivialityImpasse
Author:John Edensor Littlewood
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“A mathematician of the first rank, Laplace quickly revealed himself as only a mediocre administrator; from his first work we saw that we had been deceived. Laplace saw no question from its true point of view; he sought subtleties everywhere; had only doubtful ideas, and finally carried the spirit of the infinitely small into administration.”

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Author:Napoleon Bonaparte
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“The space that we're looking through is nine-dimensional. If you build a mathematical model, the amount of searching that we've done in 50 years is equivalent to scooping one 8-ounce glass out of the Earth's ocean, looking and seeing if you caught a fish. No, no fish in that glass? Well, I don't think you're going to conclude that there are no fish in the ocean. You just haven't searched very well yet. That's where we are.”

IfsThinkingYearsWellsDoneEarthSpaceSeeingHavensAmountOceanModelsGlassesCaughtFishesNineMathematicalMathematical Models
Author:Jill Tarter
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“In the field of Egyptian mathematics Professor Karpinski of the University of Michigan has long insisted that surviving mathematical papyri clearly demonstrate the Egyptians' scientific interest in pure mathematics for its own sake. I have now no doubt that Professor Karpinski is right, for the evidence of interest in pure science, as such, is perfectly conclusive in the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus.”

LongInterestDoubtFieldsPureEvidenceMathematicsUniversitySakeMathematicalNo DoubtProfessorsSurvivingMichiganEgyptianUniversity Of MichiganPapyrus
Author:James Henry Breasted
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“Diatonic, he heard the word in his head. Chromatic, pentatonic, hexatonic, heptatonic, octatonic, each iteration of the scale opening innumerable possibilities for harmony. He thought about the Pythagorean major third, the Didymus comma, the way the intervals sound out of tune rather than as though they were different notes. This, he thought, was where his brilliance at mathematics bled into his love of music; music was the realm in which his mathematical brain danced.”

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Author:Ru Freeman
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“Il y a deux sortes d'esprits, l'un ge ome trique, et l'autre que l'on peut appeler de finesse. Le premier a des vues lentes, dures et inflexibles; mais le dernier a une souplesse de pense e. There are two kinds of mind, one mathematical, the other what one might call the intuitive. The first takes a slow, firm, inflexible view, but the latter has flexibility of thought.”

MindFirstsKindTwoMightViewsMathematicalFirmLatterFlexibilityIntuitiveFinesse
Author:Blaise Pascal
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