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| Reductio ad absurdum is one of a mathematician's
finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess
player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but the mathematician
offers the game G. H. Hardy 20th century English mathematician, (1) p. 20 |
| An exception disproves the rule Sherlock Holmes "The Sign of Four", (1) p. 13 |
| Euler calculated without apparent effort, just
as men breathe, as eagles sustain themselves in air. Dominique Francois Arago (1786-1853) French Physicist, (1) p. 144 |
| In most sciences, one generation tears down
what another has built, and what one has established, the next undoes. In
matheamtica alone, each generation builds a new story to the old structure. Hermann Hankel (1839-1873) German Mathematician, (1) p. 202 |
| As far as the propositions of mathematics refer
to realizty, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they
do not refer to reality. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Physicist, (1) p. 330 |
| In order to seek truth it is necessary once
in the course of our life to doubt as far as possible all things. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) French Mathematician and Philosopher, (1) p. 386 |
| Does the pursuit of truth give you as much
pleasure as before? Surely it is not the knowing but the learning, not the
possessing but the acquiring, not the being-there but the getting-there,
that afford the greatest satisfaction. If I have clarified and exhausted
something, I leave it in order to go again into the dark. Thus is that insatiable
man so strange: when he has completed a structure it is not in order to
dwell in it comfortably, but to start another. Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) German Mathematician, (1) p. 395 |
| Maintained by Michele Olsen, College of the Redwoods |