“Through algebra you easily arrive at equations, but always to pass therefrom to the elegant constructions and demonstrations which usually result by means of the method of porisms is not so easy, nor is one's ingenuity and power of invention so greatly exercised and refined in this analysis.”

—  Isaac Newton

The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton (edited by Whiteside), Volume 7; Volumes 1691-1695 / pg. 261. http://books.google.com.br/books?id=YDEP1XgmknEC&printsec=frontcover
Geometriae (Treatise on Geometry)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Through algebra you easily arrive at equations, but always to pass therefrom to the elegant constructions and demonstra…" by Isaac Newton?
Isaac Newton photo
Isaac Newton 171
British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern c… 1643–1727

Related quotes

Pappus of Alexandria photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo

“Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing which shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

" A Few Words on Secret Writing http://www.lfchosting.com/eapoe/works/essays/fwsw0741.htm" in Graham's Magazine (July 1841).

Augustin Louis Cauchy photo
Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis photo

“Mechanics… was an axiomatic construction; and… its problem could be solved quantitatively by algebraic methods.”

Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (1892–1965) Dutch historian

Robert Jacobus Forbes and E. J. Dijksterhuis (1963) A History of Science and Technology, vol. I: Ancient Times to the Seventeenth Century, Baltimore.

Henry David Thoreau photo
Kim Stanley Robinson photo
Antoine Augustin Cournot photo

“Anyone who understands algebraic notation, reads at a glance in an equation results reached arithmetically only with great labour and pains.”

Source: Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth, 1897, p. 4; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 197): About mathematics as language

Theo van Doesburg photo

“After having passed through the various phases of plastic creation [the phases of arrangement, composition, and construction] I have arrived at the creation of 'universal forms' through constructing upon an arithmetical basis with the pure elements of painting.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in Van Doesburg's article 'From intuition towards certitude', 1930; as quoted in 'Réalités nouvelles', 1947, no. 1, p. 3
1926 – 1931

Emanuel Lasker photo
John Locke photo

Related topics