Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions. Eric Temple Bell More Quotes by Eric Temple Bell More Quotes From Eric Temple Bell Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth. Eric Temple Bell pretension absolute-truth eternal Poincaré was a vigorous opponent of the theory that all mathematics can be rewritten in terms of the most elementary notions of classical logic; something more than logic, he believed, makes mathematics what it is. Eric Temple Bell opponents logic mathematics If "Number rules the universe" as Pythagoras asserted, Number is merely our delegate to the throne, for we rule Number. Eric Temple Bell thrones math numbers A number of aspects of mathematics are not much talked about in contemporary histories of mathematics. We have in mind business and commerce, war, number mysticism, astrology, and religion. In some instances, writers, hoping to assert for mathematics a noble parentage and a pure scientific experience, have turned away their eyes. Histories have been eager to put the case for science, but the Handmaiden of the Sciences has lived a far more raffish and interesting life than her historians allow. Eric Temple Bell mathematical mathematics math It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences. Eric Temple Bell graphic-design immortality mathematics Poincaré [was] the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. ... Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in the gift of clear exposition. Eric Temple Bell vision lasts men Fashion as King is sometimes a very stupid ruler. Eric Temple Bell fashion stupid kings Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos. Eric Temple Bell simplicity groups statistics In his wretched life of less than twenty-seven years Abel accomplished so much of the highest order that one of the leading mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century could say without exaggeration, "Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years." Asked how he had done all this in the six or seven years of his working life, Abel replied, "By studying the masters, not the pupils." Eric Temple Bell abel seven-years order
