
“A Curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted with a straight line.”
“A Curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted with a straight line.”
“Our course of advance … is neither a straight line nor a curve. It is a series of dots and dashes.”
Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)
Context: Our course of advance... is neither a straight line nor a curve. It is a series of dots and dashes. Progress comes per saltum, by successive compromises between extremes, compromises often … between "positivism and idealism". The notion that a jurist can dispense with any consideration as to what the law ought to be arises from the fiction that the law is a complete and closed system, and that judges and jurists are mere automata to record its will or phonographs to pronounce its provisions.
“The straight line belongs to Man. The curved line belongs to God.”
The real author seems to be Pierre Albert-Birot https://books.google.com/books?id=3Ul51CwjUOcC&pg=PA290&dq=%22the+curved+line+that+belongs+let%27s+say+to+God+and+the+straight+line+that+belongs+to+man%22&hl=de&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22the%20curved%20line%20that%20belongs%20let%27s%20say%20to%20God%20and%20the%20straight%20line%20that%20belongs%20to%20man%22&f=false.
Attributed
Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 87
"Boscovich's mathematics", an article by J. F. Scott, in the book Roger Joseph Boscovich (1961) edited by Lancelot Law Whyte.
"Transient pressure analysis in composite reservoirs" (1982) by Raymond W. K. Tang and William E. Brigham.
"Non-Newtonian Calculus" (1972) by Michael Grossman and Robert Katz.
“To avoid any assertion about the infinitude of the straight line, Euclid says a line segment”
Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 175
Context: To avoid any assertion about the infinitude of the straight line, Euclid says a line segment (he uses the word "line" in this sense) can be extended as far as necessary. Unwillingness to involve the infinitely large is seen also in Euclid's statement of the parallel axiom. Instead of considering two lines that extend to infinity and giving a direct condition or assumption under which parallel lines might exist, his parallel axiom gives a condition under which two lines will meet at some finite point.