#thematic

...if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices - that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is a real mathematical formula - then, most likely, man will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of that sort; for what is a man without desires, without freewill and without choice, if not a stop in an organ? ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#free-will #mathematics

I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity. ↗

— Tallulah Bankhead

#could #did #i #inflate #known

Mark all mathematical heads which be wholly and only bent on these sciences, how solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others, how unapt to serve the world. ↗

— Roger Ascham

#heads #how #live #mark #mathematical

Mathematical discoveries, like springtime violets in the woods, have their season which no man can hasten or retard. ↗

— Janos Bolyai

#hasten #like #man #mathematical #retard

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern. ↗

— Daniel Dennett

#completely #concern #consensus #ethical #ever

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. ↗

— Nikola Tesla

#build #equation #eventually #experiments #mathematics

Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around. ↗

— Howard Nemerov

#always #around #constraints #except #extreme

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it. ↗

— Camille Paglia

#awash #bodybuilding #chemistry #defying #mathematics

Logic and mathematics are nothing but specialised linguistic structures. ↗

— Jean Piaget

#logic #mathematics #nothing #specialised #structures

It is with children that we have the best chance of studying the development of logical knowledge, mathematical knowledge, physical knowledge, and so forth. ↗

— Jean Piaget

#chance #children #development #forth #knowledge