Tobias Dantzig: Man

Tobias Dantzig was American mathematician. Explore interesting quotes on man.

Tobias Dantzig: 50 quotes0 likes

“The evolution of scientific thought is inseparable from the history of man's efforts to resolve the perplexities of his own existence.”

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 2. The Age of Innocence

“Barely a hundred and fifty years had passed since Galileo's experiment at Pisa had ushered in the new order of things; a mere instant as compared with the previous life of the race. Yet, this brief span had witnessed a complete shift in the outlook of the intellectual leaders of humanity: from blind adherence to authority and dogma towards a healthy habit of facing facts and an enlightened faith in the efficacy of reason. Few doubted that this buoyancy and self-reliance of the leaders would eventually reach the masses, thus causing a profound metamorphosis in the attitude of the common man towards his own life and the destinies of his race.
…Led by thinkers, and under the banners of liberty, happiness, and truth, humanity was to emerge into a Golden Age, free from oppression and strife. Alas! The French Revolution… resembled more a convention of inquisitors and hangmen than it did an assembly of enlightened emancipators. …After twenty years of adventure, the humanitarian aspirations bequeathed by the Encyclopedists, tattered and trampled first by a bloody republic, then by a still bloodier empire, were finally declared dead by the Holy Alliance.”

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 2. The Age of Innocence

“To describe means to classify, and the man Poincaré defies classification, as does indeed his philosophy.”

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 1. The Iconoclast

“Science… may be viewed as man's supreme effort to find himself in that perplexing pattern which he calls Nature. …Has he succeeded in achieving some measure of harmony with Nature? Or has he merely managed to transfer to Nature the irreconcilable duality within himself?”

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 2. The Age of Innocence

“The Industrial Revolution, too, failed to introduce a reign of freedom and happiness: it converted the medieval serf into an industrial slave; replaced the feudal baron by the industrial mogul, created in its wake an ever-growing, ever-shifting class of declassés, who had neither pride of ancestry nor love of tradition… The age of machine and competition, of capital, class-struggle, and demagogy was upon man.”

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 2. The Age of Innocence