“Now what are we looking at right here? What’s bang in the middle? Some people think that’s mathematics there. Fine. But if maths is the study that best allows you to think your way to the centre, what’re the forces you’re investigating? Maths is totally abstract, at one level, square roots of minus one and the like, but the world is nothing if not rigorously mathematical. So this is a way of looking at the world which unifies all the forces: mental, social, physical.”
Source: Perdido Street Station (2000), pp. 145-146
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
China Miéville102
English writer 1972Related quotes
Edward Frenkel (1968) mathematician working in representation theory, algebraic geometry, and mathematical physics
Source: Love and Math, 2013, p. 5
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment
Elements de la géométrie de l'infini (1727) as quoted by Amir R. Alexander, Geometrical Landscapes: The Voyages of Discovery and the Transformation of Mathematical Practice (2002) citing Michael S. Mahoney, "Infinitesimals and Transcendent Relations: The Mathematics of Motion in the Late Seventeenth Century" in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg, Robert S. Westman (1990)
Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
From Omni interview, "The Smartest Man in the World" (1979) or from the book p. 194.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)
William Thomson (1824–1907) British physicist and engineer
Source: In a letter addressed to George Stokes dated December 20, 1857, as quoted in Fluid Mechanics in the Next Century https://doi.org/10.1115/1.3101925 (1996), by Mohamed Gad-el-Hak and Mihir Sen.
Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer
Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), p. 111 as cited in
Sallie McFague (1933–2019) American feminist and theologian
describing Simone Weil’s view, Blessed Are the Consumers
Eric Maskin (1950) American Nobel laureate in economics
" Interview with Eric S. Maskin: Questions by TSE students http://www.tseconomist.com/all-publications/interview-with-nobel-prize-winner-eric-maskin" at tseconomist.com, 04/07/2013; In answer to the question of why he decided to become an economist.
Paul Krugman (1953) American economist
"Two Cheers for Formalism", The Economic Journal, Vol. 108, No. 451 (Nov., 1998)
Marcus du Sautoy (1965) British professor of mathematics
Conclusion in BBC's The Story of Maths, episode 4