“Mathematical knowledge may, just like our scientific knowledge, be deep and broad, it may be subtle and wonderfully explanatory, it may be uncontroversially accepted; but it cannot be certain.”
Source: The Fabric of Reality (1997), Ch. 10
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David Deutsch20
British physicist 1953Related quotes
Claude Elwood Shannon (1916–2001) American mathematician and information theorist
Coding theorems for a discrete source with a fidelity criterion. IRE International Convention Records, volume 7, pp. 142--163, 1959.
Context: This duality can be pursued further and is related to a duality between past and future and the notions of control and knowledge. Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.
William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)
Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist
Kenneth Boulding (1948) "Samuelson's Foundations: The Role of Mathematics in Economics," In: Journal of Political Economy, Vol 56 (June). as cited in: Peter J. Boettke (1998) " James M. Buchanan and the Rebirth of Political Economy http://publicchoice.info/Buchanan/files/boettke.htm". Boettke further explains "Boulding's words are even more telling today than they were then as we have seen the fruits of the formalist revolution in economic theory and how it has cut economics off from the social theoretic discourse on the human condition." <br class="br">1940s
Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president
Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)
John Gray (1948) British philosopher
An Old Chaos: Humanism and Flying Saucers (p. 81)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)
Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) American electrical engineer and science administrator
As quoted by George H. W. Bush in remarks while presenting National Medals of Science and Technology http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/papers/1990/90111300.html (13 November 1990). This might be a paraphrase of statements from his introduction to "Science The Endless Frontier" (1945), rather than a direct quote. (see below)