Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“There is a logic of language and a logic of mathematics.”
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.
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Thomas Merton92
Priest and author 1915–1968Related quotes
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Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
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Context: Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.
“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.
“The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
1900s, "The Study of Mathematics" (November 1907)
“The function of logic in mathematics is critical rather than constructive.”
George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician
100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)
“Music trains the mind, like mathematics, or logic, to precision of mind.”
Guy Gavriel Kay book Tigana
Source: Tigana (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 77)
“The great advances in mathematics have not been made by logic but by creative imagination.”
George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician
100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)
Context: Logical analysis is indispensable for an examination of the strength of a mathematical structure, but it is useless for its conception and design. The great advances in mathematics have not been made by logic but by creative imagination.