Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) mathematician and science fiction author born in Scotland who lived in the United States for most of his li…
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1938), p. 16
“The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings.”
"Two dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)
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Willard van Orman Quine25
American philosopher and logician 1908–2000Related quotes
David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist
Surviving the Future, (2016), p. 180, Epilogue http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/
“Pure mathematics is in its way the poetry of logical ideas.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
1930s, Obituary for Emmy Noether (1935)
Context: Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. One seeks the most general ideas of operation which will bring together in simple, logical and unified form the largest possible circle of formal relationships. In this effort toward logical beauty spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for the deeper penetration into the laws of nature.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1910s, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 18: Mathematics and Logic
“The assumptions and definitions of mathematics and science come from our intuition”
Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist
Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)
Context: The assumptions and definitions of mathematics and science come from our intuition, which is based ultimately on experience. They then get shaped by further experience in using them and are occasionally revised. They are not fixed for all eternity.
George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician
100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)
“To what fortuitous occurrence do we not owe every pleasure and convenience of our lives.”
Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield
Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 21.
“There is a logic of language and a logic of mathematics.”
Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author
The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton (1959)
Context: There is a logic of language and a logic of mathematics. The former is supple and lifelike, it follows our experience. The latter is abstract and rigid, more ideal. The latter is perfectly necessary, perfectly reliable: the former is only sometimes reliable and hardly ever systematic. But the logic of mathematics achieves necessity at the expense of living truth, it is less real than the other, although more certain. It achieves certainty by a flight from the concrete into abstraction. Doubtless, to an idealist, this would seem to be a more perfect reality. I am not an idealist. The logic of the poet — that is, the logic of language or the experience itself — develops the way a living organism grows: it spreads out towards what it loves, and is heliotropic, like a plant.
John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929
Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter V, The Twilight of Illusion, Section II, p. 70