Quotes & Sayings About Mathematics And Science

The elegance of a mathematical theorem is directly proportional to the number of independent ideas one can see in the theorem and inversely proportional to the effort it takes to see them. — George Polya

Infinite ambition and infinite loneliness, receiving neither help nor sympathy, I did it all for myself
navigation, mathematics, science, literature and what not. And history tells of opportunity that came to the slaves who rose to the purple. No man makes opportunity. All the great men ever did was to know it when it came to them. — Jack London

The appearance of Professor Benjamin Peirce, whose long gray hair, straggling grizzled beard and unusually bright eyes sparkling under a soft felt hat, as he walked briskly but rather ungracefully across the college yard, fitted very well with the opinion current among us that we were looking upon a real live genius, who had a touch of the prophet in his make-up. — William Elwood Byerly

It seems perfectly clear that Economy, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science. There exists much prejudice against attempts to introduce the methods and language of mathematics into any branch of the moral sciences. Most persons appear to hold that the physical sciences form the proper sphere of mathematical method, and that the moral sciences demand some other method-I know not what. — William Stanley Jevons

Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. "Immortality" may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean. — G.H. Hardy

Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say. — Bertrand Russell

I carried this problem around in my head basically the whole time. I would wake up with it first thing in the morning, I would be thinking about it all day, and I would be thinking about it when I went to sleep. Without distraction I would have the same thing going round and round in my mind.
(Recalling the degree of focus and determination that eventually yielded the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.) — Andrew John Wiles

In anger, my hostility is directed toward another's action and can be extinguished by getting even - an action that reestablishes the equilibrium ... — Jon Elster

Well, of
course one must have concentration. Courage. Self-control. That goes
without saying. But more important than these, one must have ... I
don't know how to say it. One must be both a mathematician and a
poet. As though poetry were a science; or mathematics an art. One
must have an affection for proportion to play Go at all well.Ah ... what Go is to philosophers
and warriors, chess is to accountants and merchants. — Trevanian

The most distinctive characteristic which differentiates mathematics from the various branches of empirical science, and which accounts for its fame as the queen of the sciences, is no doubt the peculiar certainty and necessity of its results. — Carl Gustav Hempel

What is mathematics? Ask this question of person chosen at random, and you are likely to receive the answer "Mathematics is the study of number." With a bit of prodding as to what kind of study they mean, you may be able to induce them to come up with the description "the science of numbers." But that is about as far as you will get. And with that you will have obtained a description of mathematics that ceased to be accurate some two and a half thousand years ago! — Keith Devlin

From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical physics and determined to become a theoretical physicist. I had no real idea what that meant, but it seemed incredibly exciting to spend one's life attempting to find the secrets of the universe by using one's mind. — David Gross

It may be true that people who are merely mathematicians have certain specific shortcomings; however that is not the fault of mathematics, but is true of every exclusive occupation. Likewise a mere linguist, a mere jurist, a mere soldier, a mere merchant, and so forth. One could add such idle chatter that when a certain exclusive occupation is often connected with certain specific shortcomings, it is on the other hand always free of certain other shortcomings. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

Le Verrier - without leaving his study, without even looking at the sky - had found the unknown planet [Neptune] solely by mathematical calculation, and, as it were, touched it with the tip of his pen! — Camille Flammarion

The first revolution is to transform the status of evaluation from untouchable to respectable , i.e., from the days a century ago when the value-free doctrine held that there could be no place for the serious treatment of evaluation within the sciences (or in the company of other respectable disciplines like history, jurisprudence, mathematics, etc.) to the days when even the National Academy of Sciences is doing evaluations at the request of Congress without protest from leading scientific and other professional organizations, and everyone will have good reasons for this acceptance. — Michael Scriven

Religion is but a single brand of superstition (others include beliefs in astrology, paranormal phenomena, homeopathy, and spiritual healing), but it is the most widespread and harmful form of superstition. And science is but one form of rationality (philosophy and mathematics are others), but it is a highly developed form, and the only one capable of describing and understanding reality. — Jerry A. Coyne

I am exclusively occupied with the problem of gravitation and hope with the help of a local mathematician friend [Marcel Grossman] to overcome all the difficulties. One thing is certain, however, that never in life have I been quite so tormented. A great respect for mathematics has been instilled within me, the subtler aspects of which, in my stupidity, I regarded until now as pure luxury. — Albert Einstein

While ritual, emotion and reasoning are all significant aspects of human nature, the most nearly unique human characteristic is the ability to associate abstractly and to reason. Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species; and the most characteristically human activities are mathematics, science, technology, music and the arts
a somewhat broader range of subjects than is usually included under the "humanities." Indeed, in its common usage this very word seems to reflect a peculiar narrowness of vision about what is human. Mathematics is as much a "humanity" as poetry. — Carl Sagan

We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years. — Mark Twain

Library Science is the key to all science, just as mathematics is its language - and civilization will rise or fall, depending on how well librarians do their jobs. — Robert A. Heinlein

Mathematics is the queen of science, and arithmetic the queen of mathematics. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

Darwin's great gift to science was simplifying all life to pure mathematics: your one and only goal on earth is multiplication. Everything you do, every instinct you have, is an evolutionary urge to make babies and leave behind as many copies of yourself as possible. From that perspective, heroism makes no sense. Why risk the grave for someone else if there's no guarantee of a biological payoff? Dying for your own kids: smart. Dying for a rival's? Genetic suicide. — Christopher McDougall

As is well known the principle of virtual velocities transforms all statics into a mathematical assignment, and by D'Alembert's principle for dynamics, the latter is again reduced to statics. Although it is is very much in order that in gradual training of science and in the instruction of the individual the easier precedes the more difficult, the simple precedes the more complicated, the special precedes the general, yet the min, once it has arrived at the higher standpoint, demands the reverse process whereby all statics appears only as a very special case of mechanics. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibniz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers. — Hans Reichenbach

Mathematics is not arithmetic. Though mathematics may have arisen from the practices of counting and measuring it really deals with logical reasoning in which theorems - general and specific statements - can be deduced from the starting assumptions. It is, perhaps, the purest and most rigorous of intellectual activities, and is often thought of as queen of the sciences. — Christopher Zeeman

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment ... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it. — Alfred North Whitehead

You are not supposed to get it. It's a paradox. All of mathematics is built on paradoxes. That's the biggest paradox of all-all this orderliness, and at the heart, impossibility. Contradiction. Heaven built on the foundations of hell. — David Leavitt

There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities ... more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things [than mathematics]. [It interprets] all phenomena by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes — Joseph Fourier

In pure mathematics the mind deal only with its own creations and imaginations. The concepts of number and form have not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on which men learned to count, that is, to carry out the first arithmetical operation, may be anything else, but they are certainly not only objects that can be counted, but also the ability to exclude all properties of the objects considered other than their number-and this ability is the product of a long historical evolution based on experience. Like the idea of number, so the idea of form is derived exclusively from the external world, and does not arise in the mind as a product of pure thought. — Friedrich Engels

The life and soul of science is its practical application, and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in the earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind. — Lord Kelvin

It is pure mythology that women cannot perform as well as men in science, engineering and mathematics. In my experience, the opposite is true: Women are often more adept and patient at untangling complex problems, multitasking, seeing the possibilities in new solutions and winning team support for collaborative action. — Weili Dai

There is no "religious language" or "scientific language". There is rather the international notation of mathematics and logic; and English, French, Spanish and the like. In short, "religious discourse" and "scientific discourse" are part of the same overall conceptual structure. Moreover, in that conceptual structure there is a large amount of discourse, which is neither religious nor scientific, that is constantly being utilized by both the religious man and the scientist when they make religious and scientific claims. In short, they share a number of key categories. — Kai Nielsen

Physics is essentially an intuitive and concrete science. Mathematics is only a means for expressing the laws that govern phenomena. — Albert Einstein

Woe be to him who tries to isolate one department of knowledge from the rest. All science is one: language, literature and history, physics, mathematics and philosophy; subjects which seem the most remote from one another are in reality connected, or rather they all form a single system. — Jules Michelet

To calculate 'the' fine structure constant, 1/137, we would need a realistic model of just about everything, and this we do not have. In this talk I want to return to the old question of what it is that determines gauge couplings in general, and try to prepare the ground for a future realistic calculation. — Steven Weinberg

The world of being is unchangeable, rigid, exact, delightful to the mathematician, the logician, the builder of metaphysical systems, and all who love perfection more than life. The world of existence is fleeting, vague, without sharp boundaries, without any clear plan or arrangement, but it contains all thoughts and feelings, all the data of sense, and all physical objects, everything that can do either good or harm, everything that makes any difference to the value of life and the world. According to our temperaments, we shall prefer the contemplation of the one or of the other. — Bertrand Russell

All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon. — Roger Bacon

Freeman denied the claim that he was a "man of God", saying that "the question of faith is whatever you actually believe is. We take a lot of what we're talking about in science on faith; we posit a theory, and until it's dis-proven we have faith that it's true. If the mathematics work out, then it's true, until it's proven to be untrue. — Morgan Freeman

That Marxism is not a science is entirely clear to intelligent people in the Soviet Union. One would even feel awkward to refer to it as a science. Leaving aside the exact sciences, such as physics, mathematics, and the natural sciences, even the social sciences can predict an event - when, in what way and how an event might occur. Communism has never made any such forecasts. It has never said where, when, and precisely what is going to happen. Nothing but declamations. Rhetoric to the effect that the world proletariat will overthrow the world bourgeoisie and the most happy and radiant society will then arise. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Many who have had an opportunity of knowing any more about mathematics confuse it with arithmetic, and consider it an arid science. In reality, however, it is a science which requires a great amount of imagination. — Sofia Kovalevskaya

There was, I think, a feeling that the best science was that done in the simplest way. In experimental work, as in mathematics, there was 'style' and a result obtained with simple equipment was more elegant than one obtained with complicated apparatus, just as a mathematical proof derived neatly was better than one involving laborious calculations. Rutherford's first disintegration experiment, and Chadwick's discovery of the neutron had a 'style' that is different from that of experiments made with giant accelerators. — John Ashworth Ratcliffe

The spectacular thing about Johnny [von Neumann] was not his power as a mathematician, which was great, or his insight and his clarity, but his rapidity; he was very, very fast. And like the modern computer, which no longer bothers to retrieve the logarithm of 11 from its memory (but, instead, computes the logarithm of 11 each time it is needed), Johnny didn't bother to remember things. He computed them. You asked him a question, and if he didn't know the answer, he thought for three seconds and would produce and answer. — Paul R. Halmos

that prudence is not science is manifest: prudence concerns the ultimate particular thing, as was said, for the action performed is of this kind. Indeed, prudence corresponds to intellect, for intellect is concerned with the defining boundaries,43 of which there is no rational account; and prudence is concerned with the ultimate particular thing, of which there is not a science but rather a perception, and a perception not of things peculiar to one of the senses, but a perception of the sort by which we perceive that the ultimate particular thing, in mathematics, is a triangle. — Aristotle.

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. 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. The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. — Henry David Thoreau

It is the invaluable merit of the great Basle mathematician Leonard Euler, to have freed the analytical calculus from all geometric bounds, and thus to have established analysis as an independent science, which from his time on has maintained an unchallenged leadership in the field of mathematics. — Thomas Reid

The true man of science will know nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than other men. His will be a deeper and finer experience. We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. It is with science as with ethics,
we cannot know truth by contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any other, and with all the helps of machinery and the arts, the most scientific will still be the healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a more perfect Indian wisdom. — Henry David Thoreau

If there should chance to be any mathematicians who, ignorant in mathematics yet pretending to skill in that science, should dare, upon the authority of some passage of Scripture wrested to their purpose, to condemn and censure my hypothesis, I value them not, and scorn their inconsiderate judgement.
De Revolutionibus Coelestibus — Nicolaus Copernicus

Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the mathematics; for it is the exact and absolute science of Nature and its laws . Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi: and the Christian religion, which has imposed silence on the lying oracles, and put an end to the prestiges of the false Gods , itself reveres those Magi who came from the East, guided by a Star , to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle. — Albert Pike

People tend to think that mathematicians always work in sterile conditions, sitting around and staring at the screen of a computer, or at a ceiling, in a pristine office. But in fact, some of the best ideas come when you least expect them, possibly through annoying industrial noise. — Edward Frenkel

This is a global fight to get the right people in the right place and we're talking about people with PhDs in engineering, computer science, mathematics. — Jerry Moran

Game theory is a branch of, originally, applied mathematics, used mostly in economics and political science, a little bit in biology, that gives us a mathematical taxonomy of social life, and it predicts what people are likely to do and believe others will do in cases where everyone's actions affect everyone else. — Colin Camerer

There has come about a general public awareness that America is not automatically, and effortlessly, and unquestionably the leader of the world in science and technology. This comes as no surprise to those of us who have watched and tried to warn against the steady deterioration in the teaching of science and mathematics in the schools for the past quarter century. It comes as no surprise to those who have known of dozens of cases of scientists who have been hounded out of jobs by silly disloyalty charges, and kept out of all professional employment by widespread blacklisting practices. — Edward Condon

In a Sense, we all are Time Travelers! We are Surviving each and every Active Time-Point in this Timeline....... — Aldrin Mathew

I liked numbers because they were solid, invariant; they stood unmoved in a chaotic world.
There was in numbers and their relation something absolute, certain, not to be questioned, beyond doubt. — Oliver Sacks

Some believers accuse skeptics of having nothing left but a dull, cold, scientific world. I am left with only art, music, literature, theatre, the magnificence of nature, mathematics, the human spirit, sex, the cosmos, friendship, history, science, imagination, dreams, oceans, mountains, love, and the wonder of birth. That'll do for me. — Lynne Kelly

My interests started about in science and in mathematics; I always thought I was going to be a mathematician. — David Chalmers

Mathematics is the gate and key to science. — Roger Bacon

Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages, from Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, through the medieval Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa and the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, to present-day scientific figures such as Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, have spent endless hours over this simple ratio and its properties. But the fascination with the Golden Ratio is not confined just to mathematicians. Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the Golden Ratio has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics. — Mario Livio

We had principles in mathematics that were granted to be absolute in mathematics for over 800 years, but new science has gotten rid of those absolutism, gotten forward other different logics of looking at mathematics, and sort of turned the way we look at it as a science altogether after 800 years. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It's why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won't notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image. — Jack Gilbert

Mathematics is an obscure field, an abstruse science, complicated and exact; yet so many have attained perfection in it that we might conclude almost anyone who seriously applied himself would achieve a measure of success. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The fallacy that dynamic processes must be modeled as if the system is in continuous equilibrium is probably the most important reason for the intellectual failure of neoclassical economics. Mathematics, science and engineering developed tools long ago to model outside of equilibrium processes. This dynamic approach to thinking about the economy should become second nature to economists. — Steve Keen

[In high school] my interests outside my academic work were debating, tennis, and to a lesser extent, acting. I became intensely interested in astronomy and devoured the popular works of astronomers such as Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans, from which I learnt that a knowledge of mathematics and physics was essential to the pursuit of astronomy. This increased my fondness for those subjects. — Allan McLeod Cormack

I propose to put forward an apology for mathematics; and I may be told that it needs none, since there are now few studies more generally recognized, for good reasons or bad, as profitable and praiseworthy. — G.H. Hardy

The word "art" means harmony for me. I never speak of mathematics and never bother with the Spirit. My only science is the choice of impressions that the light in the universe furnishes to my consciousness as an artisan which I try, by imposing an Order, and Art, an appropriate representative life, to organize ... — Robert Delaunay

Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.
— Ezra Pound

For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics? — Richard Courant

A report released by the Partnership for a New American Economy and the Partnership for New York City predicts that by 2018, there will be 800,000 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) jobs in the United States that require a master's degree or higher - and only around 550,000 American-graduates with this training. — Marvin Ammori

I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most decisively. — G.H. Hardy

I appreciate and enjoy mathematics and science and all that side of things. I definitely have that side of me even though I'm not by any means an expert, but I love reading about physics and math and that kind of stuff. I wish I knew more than I did. I mean, I read books written for laymen, not textbooks or anything. — Chris Parnell

Like musicians who can read and write complicated scores in a world without sounds, for us mathematics is a source of delight, excitement, and even controversy which are hard to share with non mathematicians. In our small micro-cosmos we should ever seek the right balance between competition and solidarity, criticism and empathy, exclusion and inclusion. — Gil Kalai

In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics. — Stephen Hawking

Indeed art is fundamental : to science, mathematics and to language. Unfortunately theorists, educators, parents and administrators have not fully understood its importance, relegating it to a secondary role, or that of an add on. — John A. Hiigli

Further, the same Arguments which explode the Notion of Luck, may, on the other side, be useful in some Cases to establish a due comparison between Chance and Design: We may imagine Chance and Design to be, as it were, in Competition with each other, for the production of some sorts of Events, and many calculate what Probability there is, that those Events should be rather be owing to the one than to the other. — Abraham De Moivre

Some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve. There's no reason why these problems shouldn't be easy, and yet they turn out to be extremely intricate. [Fermat's] Last Theorem is the most beautiful example of this. — Andrew John Wiles

Companies want to innovate. Companies that don't innovate wither on the vine. The connection between STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and the financial stability of a nation is what needs to established. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

But Miss Ferguson preferred science over penmanship. Philosophy over etiquette. And, dear heavens preserve them all, mathematics over everything. Not simply numbering that could see a wife through her household accounts. Algebra. Geometry. Indecipherable equations made up of unrecognizable symbols that meant nothing to anyone but the chit herself. It was enough to give Miss Chase hives.

The girl wasn't even saved by having any proper feminine skills. She could not tat or sing or draw. Her needlework was execrable, and her Italian worse. In fact, her only skills were completely unacceptable, as no one wanted a wife who could speak German, discuss physics, or bring down more pheasant than her husband. — Eileen Dreyer

You will perceive that economy, scientifically speaking, is a very contracted science; it is in fact a sort of vague mathematics which calculates the causes and effects of man's industry, and shows how it may be best applied. — William Stanley Jevons

Always preoccupied with his profound researches, the great Newton showed in the ordinary-affairs of life an absence of mind which has become proverbial. It is related that one day, wishing to find the number of seconds necessary for the boiling of an egg, he perceived, after waiting a minute, that he held the egg in his hand, and had placed his seconds watch (an instrument of great value on account of its mathematical precision) to boil!
This absence of mind reminds one of the mathematician Ampere, who one day, as he was going to his course of lectures, noticed a little pebble on the road; he picked it up, and examined with admiration the mottled veins. All at once the lecture which he ought to be attending to returned to his mind; he drew out his watch; perceiving that the hour approached, he hastily doubled his pace, carefully placed the pebble in his pocket, and threw his watch over the parapet of the Pont des Arts. — Camille Flammarion

Inferences of Science and Common Sense differ from those of deductive logic and mathematics in a very important respect, namely, when the premises are true and the reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable. — Bertrand Russell

However, the new Istanbul would not be a closed off society built on strict religious grounds. Influence from Middle Eastern kingdoms during that time did not spell cultural collapse, but usually the opposite, as historically the old Islamic empires were known for preservation of antiquities and a push toward topics like science, mathematics, and education. Although initially Constantinople was a ransacked, broken city, it would gradually turn into a new cultural center, where even former enemies (Christians) were allowed to re-enter and live among Muslims (although they were taxed for their faith). — Ayaz Babacan

Very few people can communicate with one another. The only language that's not subject to interpretation is mathematics, chemistry, basic science, engineering principles, and applied agriculture. But other than that, many systems today are subject to interpretation. — Jacque Fresco

The focus of history and philosophy of science scholar Arthur Miller's (2010) "137: Jung and Pauli and the Pursuit of Scientific Obsession" is Jung and Pauli's
mutual effort to discover the cosmic number or fine structure constant, which is a fundamental physical constant dealing with electromagnetism, or, from a different perspective, could be considered the philosopher's stone of the mathematical universe.
This was indeed one of Pauli and Jung's collaborative passions, but it was not the only concentration of their relationship. Quantum physics could be seen as the natural progression from ancient alchemy, through chemistry, culminating in the abstract world of subatomic particles, wave functions, and mathematics. [Ancient Egypt and Modern Psychotherapy] — Todd Hayen

To the average mathematician who merely wants to know his work is securely based, the most appealing choice is to avoid difficulties by means of Hilbert's program. Here one regards mathematics as a formal game and one is only concerned with the question of consistency ... The Realist position is probably the one which most mathematicians would prefer to take. It is not until he becomes aware of some of the difficulties in set theory that he would even begin to question it. If these difficulties particularly upset him, he will rush to the shelter of Formalism, while his normal position will be somewhere between the two, trying to enjoy the best of two worlds. — Paul Cohen

The basis for comprehension is theory, and the language of theoretical science is mathematics. — D.C. Rapaport

There is no great religion without a great schism. All of them have it. And that's because you're dealing with something called faith. And faith is not something you can prove; faith is personal opinion. Uh, when you're dealing with something with certainty, like, y'know, science or logic, you don't have the
there's no wiggle room; that's why history is not filled with warring math cults, y'know, because you can settle the issue; you can prove something to be right or wrong, and that's the end of the argument: next case. Whereas, when you're dealing with faith, you can forever argue your point, or another point, because you're dealing with intangibles. Personally, I think, faith is what you ask of somebody when you don't have the goods to prove your point. — Tom Quinn

The mathematical giant [Gauss], who from his lofty heights embraces in one view the stars and the abysses ... — Farkas Bolyai

Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science . And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics ... symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it. — Simone Weil

I think actually if you take the analogy with other areas of engineering, and increasingly of science and even mathematics, you can see people do not have to learn the vast number of formulae they used to learn. Instead, they have to learn to use the computer effectively. This frees them, I feel, to understand concepts and the foundations while they're learning the mechanics of the application of the theory. — C.A.R. Hoare

One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics. — Henri Poincare

If you refuse to study anatomy, the arts of drawing and perspective, the mathematics of aesthetics, and the science of color, let me tell you that this is more a sign of laziness than of genius. — Salvador Dali

Mathematics is the poetry of logic and the music of reason. — Albert Einstein

Let me then remind you that justice is an immutable, natural principle; and not anything that can be made, unmade, or altered by any human power. It is also a subject of science, and is to be learned, like mathematics, or any other science. It does not derive its authority from the commands, will, pleasure, or discretion of any possible combination of men, whether calling themselves a government, or by any other name. It is also, at all times, and in all places, the supreme law. And being
everywhere and always the supreme law, it is necessarily everywhere and always the only law. — Lysander Spooner

Mathematics is not something that you find lying around in your back yard. It's produced by the human mind. Yet if we ask where mathematics works best, it is in areas like particle physics and astrophysics, areas of fundamental science that are very, very far removed from everyday affairs. — Paul Davies

If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics ... — Roger Bacon

Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries - the arts and humanities. — Lisa Randall

Education is like a diamond with many facets: It includes the basic mastery of numbers and letters that give us access to the treasury of human knowledge, accumulated and refined through the ages; it includes technical and vocational training as well as instruction in science, higher mathematics, and humane letters. — Ronald Reagan

Sciences are differentiated according to the various means through which knowledge is obtained. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself. Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from philosophical science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy. SECOND ARTICLE [I, Q. — Thomas Aquinas

I was lucky to get into computers when it was a very young and idealistic industry. There weren't many degrees offered in computer science, so people in computers were brilliant people from mathematics, physics, music, zoology, whatever. They loved it, and no one was really in it for the money. — Steve Jobs

Essentially all civilizations that rose to the level of possessing an urban culture had need for two forms of science-related technology, namely, mathematics for land measurements and commerce and astronomy for time-keeping in agriculture and aspects of religious rituals. — Frederick Seitz