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"The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work." »John Von Neumann
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"Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the spirit of chemistry... If mathematical analysis should ever had prominent place in chemistry - an aberration, which is happily almost impossible - it would be a rapid and widespread degeneration of that science." »Auguste Comte, Philosophie Positive (1830)
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"As for everything else, so for mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not explained." »Arthur Cayley
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"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically." »Albert Einstein
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"A technique succeeds in mathematical physics, not by a clever trick, or a happy accident, but because it expresses some aspect of a physical truth." »O.G. Sutton
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"The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science." »Albert Einstein
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"I just have this feeling if I take pi, well past all this static, take pi to 10 million, 20 million digits, that I'll find something really incredible. Not just a pattern, not just an order, but a sign. A mathematical sign." »Andrew Schneider
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"Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever." »Albert Einstein
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"I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. . . But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a little mad." »Alfred North Whitehead
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"[F]or academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit." »Battaille
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"How did Biot arrive at the partial differential equation? [the heat conduction equation] . . . Perhaps Laplace gave Biot the equation and left him to sink or swim for a few years in trying to derive it. That would have been merely an instance of the way great mathematicians since the very beginnings of mathematical research have effortlessly maintained their superiority over ordinary mortals." »Clifford Truesdell
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"Blaise Pascal used to mark with charcoal the walls of his playroom, seeking a means of making a circle perfectly round and a triangle whose sides and angle were all equal. He discovered these things for himself and then began to seek the relationship which existed between them. He did not know any mathematical terms and so he made up his own. Using these names he made axioms and finally developed perfect demonstrations, until he had come to the thirty-second proposition of Euclid." »C. M. Cox
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| BTW, Why won't you become an editor? |
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