“The physicist … engages in complex and difficult calculations, involving the manipulating of ideal, mathematical quantities that, at first glance, are wholly lacking in the music of the living world and the beauty of the resplendent cosmos. It would seem as if there exists no relationship between these quantities and reality. Yet these ideal numbers that cannot be grasped by one's senses, these numbers that only are meaningful from within the system itself, only meaningful as part of abstract mathematical functions, symbolize the image of existence.”

—  Joseph B. Soloveitchik

Source: Halakhic Man (1983), p. 83

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 "The physicist … engages in complex and difficult calculations, involving the manipulating of ideal, mathematical quanti…" by Joseph B. Soloveitchik?
Joseph B. Soloveitchik photo
Joseph B. Soloveitchik 11
American theologian 1903–1993

Related quotes

Paul Klee photo

“To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary entry (March 1906), # 759, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968
1903 - 1910

“The concept of 'number' in its most elementary sense as the signless integer appears to be an immediate abstraction from quantitative reality subjected to processes of counting and measurement. Vulgar fractions arise from division of a quantity into equal parts. But in what sense is zero a number? Are there negative numbers? Are there numbers corresponding to incommensurable ratios? Each question requires for its solution a fresh exercise of that kind of creative imagination which we call mathematical abstraction.”

George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician

100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)

George Boole photo

“It is not of the essence of mathematics to be conversant with the ideas of number and quantity.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 12; Cited in: Alexander Bain (1870) Logic, p. 191

Richard Courant photo

“Empirical evidence can never establish mathematical existence--nor can the mathematician's demand for existence be dismissed by the physicist as useless rigor. Only a mathematical existence proof can ensure that the mathematical description of a physical phenomenon is meaningful.”

Richard Courant (1888–1972) German American mathematician (1888-1972)

Richard Courant in: The Parsimonious Universe, Stefan Hildebrandt & Anthony Tromba, Springer-Verlag, 1996, page 148

“Number is different from quantity.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Source: Mind and Nature, a necessary unity, 1988, p. 118

“From Pythagoras to Boethius, when pure mathematics consisted of arithmetic and geometry while applied mathematics consisted of music and astronomy, mathematics could be characterized as the deductive study of 'such abstractions as quantities and their consequences, namely figures and so forth' (Acquinas ca. 1260). But since the emergence of abstract algebra it has become increasingly difficult to formulate a definition to cover the whole of the rich, complex and expanding domain of mathematics.”

George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician

100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)

“Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement. This means that numbers can conceivably be accurate because there is a discontinuity between each integer and the next. Between two and three there is a jump. In the case of quantity there is no such jump, and because jump is missing in the world of quantity it is impossible for any quantity to be exact. You can have exactly three tomatoes. You can never have exactly three gallons of water. Always quantity is approximate.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Bateson (1978) " Number is Different from Quantity http://www.oikos.org/batesnumber.htm". In: CoEvolution Quarterly, Spring 1978, pp. 44-46

Georg Cantor photo

“The old and oft-repeated proposition "Totum est majus sua parte" [the whole is larger than the part] may be applied without proof only in the case of entities that are based upon whole and part; then and only then is it an undeniable consequence of the concepts "totum" and "pars". Unfortunately, however, this "axiom" is used innumerably often without any basis and in neglect of the necessary distinction between "reality" and "quantity", on the one hand, and "number" and "set", on the other, precisely in the sense in which it is generally false.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

"Über unendliche, lineare Punktmannigfaltigkeiten" in Mathematische Annalen 20 (1882) <!-- pp 113-121 --> Quoted in "Cantor's Grundlagen and the paradoxes of Set Theory" by William W. Tait

George Pólya photo

“Mathematics succeeds in dealing with tangible reality by being conceptual. We cannot cope with the full physical complexity; we must idealize.”

George Pólya (1887–1985) Hungarian mathematician

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977), p.161

John R. Commons photo

“Economic theory deals with two concepts, Value and Economy. Abstract reasoning regarding these concepts rests ultimately on mathematical concepts of quantity, time and energy. The three are inseparable, for quantity and time are dimensions of energy. The quantity relationships of energy, usually termed "statics," turn on the problem of the relation of the parts to the whole, while the time relationships, usually termed "dynamics," are the relations of a process that connects past, present and future.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 1; Lead paragraph first chapter on Mechanism, Scarcity, Working Rules

Related topics