“Human beings are incontestably capital from an abstract and mathematical point of view.”

Richard Hamming, Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985).

Ideas and Opinions (1954), pp. 238–239; quoted in &quot;Einstein&#x27;s Philosophy of Science&quot; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/ <br class="br">1950s <br class="br">Context: The theory of relativity is a beautiful example of the basic character of the modern development of theory. That is to say, the hypotheses from which one starts become ever more abstract and more remote from experience. But in return one comes closer to the preeminent goal of science, that of encompassing a maximum of empirical contents through logical deduction with a minimum of hypotheses or axioms. The intellectual path from the axioms to the empirical contents or to the testable consequences becomes, thereby, ever longer and more subtle. The theoretician is forced, ever more, to allow himself to be directed by purely mathematical, formal points of view in the search for theories, because the physical experience of the experimenter is not capable of leading us up to the regions of the highest abstraction. Tentative deduction takes the place of the predominantly inductive methods appropriate to the youthful state of science. Such a theoretical structure must be quite thoroughly elaborated in order for it to lead to consequences that can be compared with experience. It is certainly the case that here, as well, the empirical fact is the all-powerful judge. But its judgment can be handed down only on the basis of great and difficult intellectual effort that first bridges the wide space between the axioms and the testable consequences. The theorist must accomplish this Herculean task with the clear understanding that this effort may only be destined to prepare the way for a death sentence for his theory. One should not reproach the theorist who undertakes such a task by calling him a fantast; instead, one must allow him his fantasizing, since for him there is no other way to his goal whatsoever. Indeed, it is no planless fantasizing, but rather a search for the logically simplest possibilities and their consequences.

Book IV, Ch. 3, sec. 18
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

Paris 1923
As quoted by Marius de Zayas, in 'The Arts', New York, May 1923
Quotes, 1920's, "Picasso Speaks," 1923

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 2, §8 (p. 72)

Source: The Methods of Ethics (1874), Book 4, chapter 5, section 3 (7th ed., 1907)

Forward, as quoted by Mario Livio, Is God a Mathematician? (2009)
Ausdehnungslehre (1844)

Letter to Legendre (July 2, 1830) in response to Fourier&#x27;s report to the Paris Academy Science that mathematics should be applied to the natural sciences, as quoted in Science (March 10, 1911) Vol. 33 https://books.google.com/books?id=4LU7AQAAMAAJ&amp;pg=PA359, p.359, with additional citations and dates from H. Pieper, &quot;Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi,&quot; Mathematics in Berlin (2012) p.46

Bjarne Stroustrup: Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006. ACM HOPL-III. June 2007., 2008-04-25, http://web.archive.org/web/20071120015600/http://www.research.att.com/~bs/hopl-almost-final.pdf, 2007-11-20 http://www.research.att.com/~bs/hopl-almost-final.pdf,