“In mathematics, in science, and in life, we constantly face the delicate, tricky task of separating design from happenstance.”

Source: The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari (1997), Chapter 2, “Sea of Life” (p. 43)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In mathematics, in science, and in life, we constantly face the delicate, tricky task of separating design from happens…" by Ivars Peterson?
Ivars Peterson photo
Ivars Peterson 9
Canadian mathematician 1948

Related quotes

Tori Amos photo

“An angel's face is tricky to wear constantly.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

"Purple People (Christmas in Space)".
Songs

Akshay Agrawal photo

“I was a borderline computer science major before I came into interaction design; I’m really interested in physics and chemistry. This class was a way to throw design back into science and mathematics and help a community that is helping to give back to us.”

Akshay Agrawal (1998) Serial Social Entrepreneur

About working with MIT and JPL on an Ocean Eddy Simulation Visualization tool https://web.archive.org/web/20180518011711/https://designmattersatartcenter.org/proj/seeing-the-unseen/

Rosalind Franklin quote: “Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.”
Rosalind Franklin photo

“Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.”

Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958) British chemist, biophysicist, and X-ray crystallographer

in answer to her father, who accused her of making science her religion, as related by [Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA‎, Perennial, 2003, 0060985089, 61]

Terry Pratchett photo

“Calculating how much carbon is absorbed by which forests and farms is a tricky task, especially when politicians do it.”

Donella Meadows (1941–2001) American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer

Meadows (2000) " No Point in Waiting Around for Leadership http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0221-04.htm". in: The Global Citizen, November 30, 2000.

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“We cannot afford merely to sit down and deplore the evils of city life as inevitable, when cities are constantly growing, both absolutely and relatively. We must set ourselves vigorously about the task of improving them; and this task is now well begun.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

"The City in Modern Life", Literary Essays (vol. 12 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., 1926), p. 226. Book review in The Atlantic Monthly (April 1895)
1890s

“The assumptions and definitions of mathematics and science come from our intuition”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)
Context: The assumptions and definitions of mathematics and science come from our intuition, which is based ultimately on experience. They then get shaped by further experience in using them and are occasionally revised. They are not fixed for all eternity.

Alexander von Humboldt photo
Anthony Burgess photo

Related topics