A Quote by Robert M. Pirsig

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

Robert M. Pirsig

Quote Topics

Another Cannot Convenient Geometry More Only Than True

Quote Author

Robert M. Pirsig
American - Philosopher
Born: September 6, 1928

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.

Henri Poincare

. . . by natural selection our mind has adapted itself to the conditions of the external world. It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words, the most convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

Henri Poincare

Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

Henri Poincare

I am coming more and more to the conviction that the necessity of our geometry cannot be demonstrated, at least neither by, nor for, the human intellect. . . Geometry should be ranked, not with arithmetic, which is purely aprioristic, but with mechanics.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence.

Ibn Khaldun

Analytical geometry has never existed. There are only people who do linear geometry badly, by taking coordinates, and they call this analytical geometry. Out with them!

Jean Dieudonne

It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words, the most convenient.

Henri Poincare

The concept of congruence in Euclidean geometry is not exactly the same as that in non-Euclidean geometry. ..."Congruent" means in Euclidean geometry the same as "determining parallelism," a meaning which it does not have in non-Euclidean geometry.

Hans Reichenbach

In fact, Gentlemen, no geometry without arithmetic, no mechanics without geometry... you cannot count upon success, if your mind is not sufficiently exercised on the forms and demonstrations of geometry, on the theories and calculations of arithmetic ... In a word, the theory of proportions is for industrial teaching, what algebra is for the most elevated mathematical teaching.

Jean-Victor Poncelet

Metrical geometry is thus a part of descriptive geometry, and descriptive geometry is all geometry.

Arthur Cayley

Not that the propositions of geometry are only approximately true, but that they remain absolutely true in regard to that Euclidean space which has been so long regarded as being the physical space of our experience.

Arthur Cayley

Algebra is nothing more than geometry, in words; geometry is nothing more than algebra, in pictures.

Sophie Germain

The purely formal language of geometry describes adequately the reality of space. We might say, in this sense, that geometry is successful magic. I should like to state a converse: is not all magic, to the extent that it is successful, geometry?

Rene Thom

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

Lord Acton

I am coming more and more to the conviction that the necessity of our geometry cannot be demonstrated, at least neither by, nor for, the human intellect.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

What is more true than anything else? To swim is true and to sink is true. One cannot speak any more of being, one must speak onlyof the mess.