Blindness to the aesthetic element in mathematics is widespread and can account for a feeling that mathematics is dry as dust, as exciting as a telephone book... Contrariwise, appreciation of this element makes the subject live in a wonderful manner and burn as no other creation of the human mind seems to do.
Philip J. DavisIn the realm of ideas, of mental objects, those ideas whose properties are reproducible are called mathematical objects, and the study of mental objects with reproducible properties is called mathematics.
Philip J. Davis