
“The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.”
1900s, "The Study of Mathematics" (November 1907)
"I and I," p. 30
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Happiness of Atoms”
“The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.”
1900s, "The Study of Mathematics" (November 1907)
“Mathematics doesn’t care about those beyond the numbers.”
"I and I," p. 30
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Happiness of Atoms”
In Heinz R. Pagels, The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity, Ch. 3, p. 94; as quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (Springer, 2008), p. 861
As quoted in Fundamentals of Teaching Mathematics at University Level (2000) by Benjamin Baumslag, p. 214
Source: 1910s, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 18: Mathematics and Logic
“There is a logic of language and a logic of mathematics.”
The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton (1959)
Context: There is a logic of language and a logic of mathematics. The former is supple and lifelike, it follows our experience. The latter is abstract and rigid, more ideal. The latter is perfectly necessary, perfectly reliable: the former is only sometimes reliable and hardly ever systematic. But the logic of mathematics achieves necessity at the expense of living truth, it is less real than the other, although more certain. It achieves certainty by a flight from the concrete into abstraction. Doubtless, to an idealist, this would seem to be a more perfect reality. I am not an idealist. The logic of the poet — that is, the logic of language or the experience itself — develops the way a living organism grows: it spreads out towards what it loves, and is heliotropic, like a plant.
Sam Harris, "Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? – William Lane Craig vs. Sam Harris http://www.reasonablefaith.org/is-the-foundation-of-morality-natural-or-supernatural-the-craig-harris, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States – April 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk7jHJRSzhM&t=1m10s
2010s
Source: The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (1992), Chapter 6: "The rage of jealous time", p. 73