A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?
Martin GardnerIf you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneronโฆ my answer is โHow should I know?โโฆ I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteriesโฆ I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph.
Martin GardnerDebunking bad science should be constant obligation of the science community, even if it takes time away from serious research or seems to be a losing battle. One takes comfort from the fact there is no Gresham's laws in science. In the long run, good science drives out bad.
Martin GardnerAs far as I know, Clifford Pickover is the first mathematician to write a book about areas where math and theology overlap. Are there mathematical proofs of God? Who are the great mathematicians who believed in a deity? Does numerology lead anywhere when applied to sacred literature? Pickover covers these and many other off-trail topics with his usual verve, humor, and clarity. And along the way the reader will learn a great deal of serious mathematics.
Martin GardnerThe last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician.
Martin GardnerPoliticians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs.
Martin Gardner