#mathematics

Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion - thus: Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; Therefore- Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second. This may be called syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#logic #mathematics #art

It might seem that the empirical philosopher is the slave of his material, but that the pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#mathematician #music #musician #philosopher #philosophy

The oldest problem in economic education is how to exclude the incompetent. A certain glib mastery of verbiage-the ability to speak portentously and sententiously about the relation of money supply to the price level-is easy for the unlearned and may even be aided by a mildly enfeebled intellect. The requirement that there be ability to master difficult models, including ones for which mathematical competence is required, is a highly useful screening device. ↗

— John Kenneth Galbraith

#mathematics #education

I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. ↗

— Mark Twain

#humor #mathematics #school #education

I lose faith in mathematics, logical and rigid. What with those that even zero doesn’t accept? ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#acceptance #dejan-stojanovic #faith #literature #literature-quotes

Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility. ↗

— James Gleick

#chaos-theory #life #mathematics #paradigm #paradigm-shift

Mathematics effectively began when a few Greek friends got together to talk about numbers and lines and angles. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#love

I hate math. It's hard, it's stupid, and it's nature's way of separating spinsters from women who end up breeding. ↗

— Douglas Coupland

#nature

The mathematicians are the priests of the modern world. ↗

— Bill Gaede

#gaede #god #mathematics #peer #physics

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

#mathematics #religion #science #nature