“When a theory is sufficiently general to cover many fields of application, it acquires some "truth" from each of them.”

—  Richard Hamming

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)
Context: When a theory is sufficiently general to cover many fields of application, it acquires some "truth" from each of them. Thus... a positive value for generalization in mathematics.

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Richard Hamming90
American mathematician and information theorist 1915–1998

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