Ivor Grattan-Guinness quote: “Mathematics is one of the most basic -- and most ancient -- types of knowledge. Yet the details of its historical devel…”

“Mathematics occupies a peculiar position in cultural life today. 'Everybody knows' that it is one of the most basic, and also ancient, types of knowledge; yet it is not part of normal cultural discourse, and few people know much about its historical development, or even that it has a history.”

Ivor Grattan-Guinness (1941–2014) Historian of mathematics and logic

Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 1, page 3, 2003.

“… the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Variant: The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“The goal of providing basic literacy and education to all the world’s people is still the most basic development challenge.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

October 14, 2003, at the World Congress –Engineering and Digital Divide, Tunisia.

“The mathematical activity of Ancient Greece reached its peak during the glorious era of Euclid, Eratosthenes, Archimedes and Apollonius, a time when Greek letters, art and philosophy were already on the decline. …it was not Greece proper but its outposts in Asia Minor, in Lower Italy, in Africa that had contributed most to the development of mathematics.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

The Bequest of the Greeks (1955)

“The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“It is an historical commonplace that social explosions take place when most of the fundamental causes of dissatisfaction have been removed and only a few remain. This is the result of a feeling of power.”

C. L. R. James book Beyond a Boundary

Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 229

“Though its fame is much restricted by its specialized nature, there is no doubt that Panini's grammar is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of any ancient civilization, and the most detailed and scientific grammar composed before the 19th century in any part of the world.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Professor A. L. Basham in: Daya Kishan Thussu Communicating India's Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood https://books.google.co.in/books?id=Ab_QAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA47, Palgrave Macmillan, 24 October 2013, p. 47.

“Though its fame is much restricted by its specialized nature, there is no doubt that Panini's grammar is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of any ancient civilization, and the most detailed and scientific grammar composed before the 19th century in any part of the world.”

Arthur Llewellyn Basham (1914–1986) British historian and Indologist

Professor A. L. Basham in: Daya Kishan Thussu Communicating India's Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood https://books.google.co.in/books?id=Ab_QAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA47, Palgrave Macmillan, 24 October 2013, p. 47.

“Mathematics is the bold luxury of pure reason, one of the few that remain today.”

Robert Musil (1880–1942) Austrian writer

Source: “Mathematical man” (1913), p. 41

“Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

1970s, How do we tell truths that might hurt? (1975)

“Mathematics is one of the most basic -- and most ancient -- types of knowledge. Yet the details of its historical development remain obscure to all but a few specialists.”

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Ivor Grattan-Guinness 8

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