A Quote by James Joseph Sylvester
As the prerogative of Natural Science is to cultivate a taste for observation, so that of Mathematics is, almost from the starting point, to stimulate the faculty of invention.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
If you ask ... the man in the street ... the human significance of mathematics, the answer of the world will be, that mathematics has given mankind a metrical and computatory art essential to the effective conduct of daily life, that mathematics admits of countless applications in engineering and the natural sciences, and finally that mathematics is a most excellent instrumentality for giving mental discipline... [A mathematician will add] that mathematics is the exact science, the science of exact thought or of rigorous thinking.
Mathematics has two faces: it is the rigorous science of Euclid, but it is also something else. Mathematics presented in the Euclidean way appears as a systematic, deductive science; but mathematics in the making appears as an experimental, inductive science. Both aspects are as old as the science of mathematics itself.
It is the merest truism, evident at once to unsophisticated observation, that mathematics is a human invention.
Painting is a science pursued as an enquiry into the laws of nature...Observation is considered the key to natural science.
In the history of science, we often find that the study of some natural phenomenon has been the starting point in the development of a new branch of knowledge.
Mathematics is often defined as the science of space and number . . . it was not until the recent resonance of computers and mathematics that a more apt definition became fully evident: mathematics is the science of patterns.
[Mathematics] unceasingly calls forth the faculties of observation and comparison; one of its principal weapons is induction: it has frequent recourse to trial and verification; and it affords a boundless scope for the exercise of the highest efforts of imagination and invention.
Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much closer to the truth. The basis of growth of modern invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.
Science surrounds you. It's not something that you can step aside, step over or push out of your way because you were never good at science in school. Science is around you. Once you know and embrace that fact, it might stimulate curiosity within you to learn more about the natural world.
In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.
The faculty of art is to change events; the faculty of science is to foresee them. The phenomena with which we deal are controlled by art; they are predicted by science.
Mathematics is a part of physics. Physics is an experimental science, a part of natural science. Mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap.
I like science and mathematics. When I say mathematics, I don't mean algebra or math in that sense, but the mathematics of things.
Since science is essentially objective, involving the study of how things actually are, "materialism" would therefore seem to be its antithesis, since its starting point is the desire to impose upon the natural world a particular and limited way of looking at it.
But there is another reason for the high repute of mathematics: it is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain.
I think you can have a science of the taste of chicken soup, or the taste of Chateau Latour. My point is only that knowing this science alone will not tell you what chicken soup or Chateau Latour tastes like.
Related Authors
Ada Lovelace Quotes
English
Mathematician
Alfred North Whitehead Quotes
English
Mathematician
Benoit Mandelbrot Quotes
French
Mathematician
Carl Friedrich Gauss Quotes
German
Mathematician
Charles Babbage Quotes
English
Mathematician
David Hilbert Quotes
German
Mathematician
G. H. Hardy Quotes
British
Mathematician
George Polya Quotes
Hungarian
Mathematician
Hannah Fry Quotes
English
Mathematician
Henri Poincare Quotes
French
Mathematician
Isaac Barrow Quotes
English
Mathematician
Isaac Newton Quotes
English
Mathematician
Norbert Wiener Quotes
American
Mathematician
Pythagoras Quotes
Greek
Mathematician
Rene Descartes Quotes
French
Mathematician
Seymour Papert Quotes
American
Mathematician