“A mervaylous newtrality have these thinges Mathematicall, and also a straunge participatió betwene thynges supernaturall, immortall, intellectual, simple and indivisible: and thynges naturall, mortall, sensible, compounded and divisible.”

— John Dee

The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A mervaylous newtrality have these thinges Mathematicall, and also a straunge participatió betwene thynges supernatural…" by John Dee?

John Dee 10

English mathematican, astrologer and antiquary 1527–1608

Related quotes

“Now it is one great object of this work, to shew the importance and advantage of ascertaining the relative weights of the ultimate particles, both of simple and compound bodies, the number of simple elementary particles which constitute one compound particle, and the number of less compound particles which enter into the formation of one more compound particle.”

John Dalton book A New System of Chemical Philosophy

Source: A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), Ch. III. On Chemical Synthesis

“It is remarkable of the simple substances that they are generally in some compound form.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 35
Context: It is remarkable of the simple substances that they are generally in some compound form. Thus oxygen and nitrogen, though in union they form the aerial envelope of the globe, are never found separate in nature. Carbon is pure only in the diamond. And the metallic bases of the earths, though the chemist can disengage them, may well be supposed unlikely to remain long uncombined, seeing that contact with moisture makes them burn. Combination and re-combination are principles largely pervading nature. There are few rocks, for example, that are not composed of at least two varieties of matter, each of which is again a compound of elementary substances. What is still more wonderful with respect to this principle of combination, all the elementary substances observe certain mathematical proportions in their unions. It is hence supposed that matter is composed of infinitely minute particles or atoms, each of which belonging to any one substance, can only (through the operation of some as yet hidden law) associate with a certain number of the atoms of any other.

“The post-Freudians … have fallen victim to the ravages of the intellectual division of labor.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 58

“An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.”

Charles Bukowski book Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)

“The smallest natural point is larger than all mathematical points, and this is proved because the natural point has continuity, and any thing that is continuous is infinitely divisible; but the mathematical point is indivisible because it has no size.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), II Linear Perspective

“Every quantity is intellectually conceivable as infinitely divisible.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“Whoever estimates the sensible sameness by the verbal identity of their common name will commit the error of mistaking for physical what is only intellectual. …the sensible signification of language is strictly limited by the sensible knowledge of the hearer.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

Part II. Of the Extent of Sensible Knowledge.
The Physiology of the Senses: Or, How and what We See, Hear, Taste, Feel and Smell (1856)

“Theorem II. Any feel which feeling has not informed me of, is unknown to me. Comments. 1. Words are sensibly intelligent to a man of only such words as he has experienced. 2. The intellectual signification of words discriminated from the sensible signification. 3. Intellectual intimations discriminated from sensible revelations.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

Part II. Of the Extent of Sensible Knowledge.
The Physiology of the Senses: Or, How and what We See, Hear, Taste, Feel and Smell (1856)

“Every animal possesses something which distinguishes it from all other animals; and this is what I understand by personal identity, or rather the identical self. This in every animal is perfectly distinct and indivisible, since the only knowledge we have of it is when it is entire; and divisibility of this is what we cannot conceive: but if indivisible, it must also be indestructible, and must always have existed. Itis not possessed of any kind of consciousness: but no consciousness can, it appears, exist without it; as life itself seems to be composed of personal identity, and other essentials of the mind or body, and that it is the combination which produces consciousness.”

Lewis Gompertz (1783–1861) Early animal rights activist

"Theorem I: Personal Identity, or Identical Self", Chapter 5, pp. 69–70
Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824)

“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Variant: simple things are the most valuable and only wise people appreciate them".
Source: The Alchemist

“A mervaylous newtrality have these thinges Mathematicall, and also a straunge participatió betwene thynges supernaturall, immortall, intellectual, simple and indivisible: and thynges naturall, mortall, sensible, compounded and divisible.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Dee 10

Related quotes

Related topics