Abstractness, sometimes hurled as a reproach at mathematics, is its chief glory and its surest title to practical usefulness. It is also the source of such beauty as may spring from mathematics. Eric Temple Bell More Quotes by Eric Temple Bell More Quotes From Eric Temple Bell Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions. Eric Temple Bell intelligence taught math Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics. Eric Temple Bell math science knowledge If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper. Eric Temple Bell mathematics paper games Nevertheless, the consuming hunger of the uncritical mind for what it imagines to be certainty or finality impels it to feast upon shadows in the prevailing famine of substance. Eric Temple Bell shadow imagination mind The very basis of creative work is irreverence! The very basis of creative work is bold experimentation. There has never been a creator of lasting importance who has not also been an innovator. Eric Temple Bell irreverence importance creative The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future... Eric Temple Bell mistake opportunity past The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes. Eric Temple Bell individualism mathematics life I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly. Eric Temple Bell machines understanding math Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, these three, are in a class by Eric Temple Bell ordinary class order Galois read the geometry from cover to cover as easily as other boys read a pirate yarn. Eric Temple Bell teenager boys science Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes. Eric Temple Bell apes race math If a lunatic scribbles a jumble of mathematical symbols it does not follow that the writing means anything merely because to the inexpert eye it is indistinguishable from higher mathematics. Eric Temple Bell eye writing mean The only royal road to elementary geometry is ingenuity. Eric Temple Bell geometry royal science The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular. Eric Temple Bell doubt math silly The full impact of the Lobachevskian method of challenging axioms has probably yet to be felt. It is no exaggeration to call Lobachevsky the Copernicus of Geometry [as did Clifford], for geometry is only a part of the vaster domain which he renovated; it might even be just to designate him as a Copernicus of all thought. Eric Temple Bell impact challenges science Pick the assumptions to pieces till the stuff they are made of is exposed to plain view - this is the cardinal rule for understanding the basis of our beliefs. Eric Temple Bell pieces understanding views Had Poincaré been as strong in practical science as he was in theoretical he might have made a fourth with the incomparable Eric Temple Bell three strong might Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week. Eric Temple Bell engineering symbolism trying Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us. Eric Temple Bell fool greater comfort Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness. Eric Temple Bell inspiration past art
