All our surest statements about the nature of the world are mathematical statements, yet we do not know what mathematics "is"... and so we find that we have adapted a religion strikingly similar to many traditional faiths. Change "mathematics" to "God" and little else might seem to change. The problem of human contact with some spiritual realm, of timelessness, of our inability to capture all with language and symbol-all have their counterparts in the quest for the nature of Platonic mathematics.
John D. BarrowApparently, a great deal of dark, unseen material exists, whose gravitational pull is responsible for the motions of the stars and galaxies that we see.
John D. BarrowOne would normally define a "religion" as a system of ideas that contain statements that cannot be logically or observationally demonstrated... Gรถdels theorem not only demonstrates that meathematics is a religion, but shows that mathematics is the only religion that proves itself to be one!
John D. BarrowHistory is full of people who thought they were right -- absolutely right, completely right, without a shadow of a doubt. And because history never seems like history when you are living through it, it is tempting for us to think the same.
John D. Barrow