Quotes About Mathematics

May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason? The musician feels mathematics, the mathematician thinks music: music the dream, mathematics the working life.

One cannot inquire into the foundations and nature of mathematics without delving into the question of the operations by which the mathematical activity of the mind is conducted. If one failed to take that into account, then one would be left studying only the language in which mathematics is represented rather than the essence of mathematics.

Today, it is not only that our kings do not know mathematics, but our philosophers do not know mathematics and - to go a step further - our mathematicians do not know mathematics.

Mathematics is often defined as the science of space and number . . . it was not until the recent resonance of computers and mathematics that a more apt definition became fully evident: mathematics is the science of patterns.

One may say that mathematics talks about the things which are of no concern to men. Mathematics has the inhuman quality of starlight - brilliant, sharp but cold ... thus we are clearest where knowledge matters least: in mathematics, especially number theory.

Mathematics is the queen of science, and arithmetic the queen of mathematics.

If you want to be a physicist, you must do three things-first, study mathematics, second, study more mathematics, and third, do the same.

A Christian boy or girl can learn mathematics, for example, from a teacher who is not a Christian; and truth is truth however learned. But while truth is truth however learned, the bearing of truth, the meaning of truth, the purpose of truth, even in the sphere of mathematics, seem entirely different to the Christian from that which they seem to the non-Christian; and that is why a truly Christian education is possible only when Christian conviction underlies not a part but all, of the curriculum of the school.

It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

The propositions of mathematics have, therefore, the same unquestionable certainty which is typical of such propositions as "All bachelors are unmarried," but they also share the complete lack of empirical content which is associated with that certainty: The propositions of mathematics are devoid of all factual content; they convey no information whatever on any empirical subject matter.

The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.

Is mathematics doomed to suffer the same fate as other sciences that have split into separate branches?... Mathematics is, in my opinion, an indivisible whole... May the new century bring with it ingenious champions and many zealous and enthusiastic disciples.

With the exception of the geometrical series, there does not exist in all of mathematics a single infinite series the sum of which has been rigorously determined. In other words, the things which are the most important in mathematics are also those which have the least foundation.

So in the end it wasn't Gödel, it wasn't Turing, and it wasn't my results that are making mathematics go into an experimental mathematics direction, in a quasi-empirical direction. The reason why mathematicians are changing their working habits is the computer. I think that this is an excellent joke!

The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics; that is mixed mathematics.

I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.

The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.

Mathematics is a language plus reasoning. It's like a language plus logic. Mathematics is a tool for reasoning.

Everyone knows what a curve is, until he has studied enough mathematics to become confused through the countless number of possible exceptions.

In short, if we adhere to the standard of perfection in all our endeavors, we are left with nothing but mathematics and the White Album.

Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliché... What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.

The idea here, of course, is, you know, mathematics is the language of science, it's the way that we understand the natural world. And there's definitely been a push to sort of study advanced math and kind of reawaken the love of advanced math.

Doing mathematics should always mean finding patterns and crafting beautiful and meaningful explanations.

The importance of the "New Mathematics" lies mainly in the fact that it has taught us the difference between the disc and the circle.

I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons, and his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics

... we should not be disappointed that everyday language does not work any longer at the apex of our little theory. It is natural; like poetry, the very reason for the existence of mathematics is that it expresses thoughts and feelings which we cannot express in mundane everyday language.

If mathematics is to be understood widely, we need to emphasise its elegance and its applications. Sometimes it seems that universities want to emphasise how difficult it is!

There are fields of scientific work...which have been explored from the different sides of pure mathematics, statistics, electrical engineering, and neurophysiology...in which every single notion receives a separate and different name from each group, and in which important work has been triplicated or quadruplicated, while still other important work is delayed by the unavailability in one field of results that may have already become classical in the next field.

What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Foundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin.

Mathematics is fun if you don't let mathematicians push you around when you are doing it.

The power of mathematics is often to change one thing into another, to change geometry into language.

Why does mathematics describe nature. That's a deeper question than most.

The so-called mysteries of quantum mechanics are in its philosophical interpretation, not in its mathematics.

It is the duty of all teachers, and of teachers of mathematics in particular, to expose their students to problems much more than to facts.

And silence. She liked the silence most of all. The silence in which the body, senses, the instincts, are more alert, more powerful, more sensitized, live a more richly perfumed and intoxication life, instead of transmuting into thoughts, words, into exquisite abstractions, mathematics of emotion in place of violent impact, the volcanic eruptions of fever, lust and delight.

The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.

I came into history from a primary concern with mathematics and science. This has been a tremendous help to me as a person and as a historian, although it must be admitted it has served to make my historical interpretations less conventional than may be acceptable of many of my colleagues in the field.

If it squirms, it's biology; if it stinks, it's chemistry; if it doesn't work, it's physics; and if you can't understand it, it's mathematics.

Even when I was studying mathematics, physics, and computer science, it always seemed that the problem of consciousness was about the most interesting problem out there for science to come to grips with.

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.

It is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics.

Mathematics is not a language, it's an adventure

Wherever Mathematics is mixed up with anything, which is outside its field, you will find attempts to demonstrate these merely conventional propositions a priori, and it will be your task to find out the false deduction in each case.

Mathematics is the summit of human thinking. It has all the creativity and imagination that you can find in all kinds of art, but unlike art-charlatans and all kinds of quacks will not succeed there.

Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.

Our faith in Mathematics is not likely to wane if we openly acknowledge that the personalities of even the greatest mathematicians may be as flawed as those of anyone else.

Perhaps there will be prattlers who, although completely ignorant of mathematics, nevertheless take it upon themselves to pass judgment on mathematical questions, and on account of some passage in Scripture, badly distorted to their purpose, will dare to censure and assail what I have presented here.