Eric Temple Bell, né le 7 février 1883 et mort le 21 décembre 1960, est un mathématicien et écrivain, notamment de science-fiction. Né à Peterhead en Écosse, Bell a passé presque toute sa vie aux États-Unis et est mort à Watsonville en Californie. Ses œuvres de fiction sont parues sous le pseudonyme de John Taine. Wikipedia
“Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth”
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 291
Contexte: Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth; some of its rivals do. That science is in some respects inhuman may be the secret of its success in alleviating human misery and mitigating human stupidity.
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 274
Contexte: Some, of my unmathematical friends have incautiously urged me to include a note about the origin of modern calculating machines. This is the proper place to do so, as the Queen of queens has enslaved a few of these infernal things to do some of her more repulsive drudgery. What I shall say about these marvelous aids to the feeble human intelligence will be little indeed, for two reasons: I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 23-24. (1949), p. 161
Contexte: Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions. Then, in the alleged proof, be alert for inexplicit assumptions. Euclid's notorious oversights drove this lesson home.
Men of Mathematics (1937)
Contexte: The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so also can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.<!--1986 ed., p. 488
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 226
Contexte: Some of his deepest discoveries were reasoned out verbally with very few if any symbols, and those for the most part mere abbreviations of words. Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust on him should try to get on without it for a week.
Source: The Development of Mathematics (1940), p. 283
Contexte: The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future; and should analysis ever appear to be without or blemish, its perfection might only be that of death.
“Fashion as king is sometimes a very stupid ruler.”
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 146
Contexte: Fashion as king is sometimes a very stupid ruler. As was observed a little way back, the kernel of Plücker's theory of geometric dimensionality is that the dimensionality of a given space is not an absolute constant, but depends upon the elements, accepted as irreducible, in terms of which the space is described.
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 16
p 164
Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938)
As quoted in 777 Mathematical Conversation Starters http://books.google.co.in/books?id=JNbKURWmODkC&pg=PA172 (2002) by John de Pillis, p. 172
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 7
