Butler, Samuel (1612 - 1680)
... There can be no
doubt about faith
and not reason being
the ultima
ratio. Even
Euclid, who has laid
himself as little
open to the charge
of credulity as any
writer who ever
lived, cannot get
beyond this. He has
no demonstrable
first premise. He
requires postulates
and axioms which
transcend
demonstration, and
without which he can
do nothing. His
superstructure
indeed is
demonstration, but
his ground his
faith. Nor again can
he get further than
telling a man he is
a fool if he
persists in
differing from him.
He says "which is
absurd," and
declines to discuss
the matter further.
Faith and authority,
therefore, prove to
be as necessary for
him as for anyone
else.
Burke, Edmund
The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded.
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Butler, Bishop
To us probability is the very guide of life.
Buck, Pearl S. (1892 - 1973)
No one really
understood music
unless he was a
scientist, her
father had declared,
and not just a
scientist, either,
oh, no, only the
real ones, the
theoreticians, whose
language is
mathematics. She had
not understood
mathematics until he
had explained to her
that it was the
symbolic language of
relationships. "And
relationships," he
had told her,
"contained the
essential meaning of
life."
The Goddess Abides,
Pt. I, 1972.
Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)
[I]ndeed what reason
may not go to
Schoole to the
wisdome of Bees,
Aunts, and Spiders?
What wise hand
teacheth them to doe
what reason cannot
teach us? Ruder
heads stand amazed
at those prodigious
pieces of nature,
Whales, Elephants,
Dromidaries and
Camels; these I
confesse, are the
Colossus and
Majestick pieces of
her hand; but in
these narrow Engines
there is more
curious
Mathematicks, and
the civilitie of
these little
Citizens more neatly
sets forth the
wisedome of their
Maker.
In J. R. Newman
(ed.), The World of
Mathematics, New
York: Simon and
Schuster, 1956, p.
1001.
Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)
God is like a skilful Geometrician.
Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)
All things began in Order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again, according to the Ordainer of Order, and the mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven.
Hydriotaphia, Urn-burial and the Garden of Cyrus, 1896.
Brown, George Spencer (1923 - )
To arrive at the
simplest truth, as
Newton knew and
practiced, requires
years of
contemplation. Not
activity. Not
reasoning. Not
calculating. Not
busy behaviour of
any kind. Not
reading. Not
talking. Not making
an effort. Not
thinking. Simply
bearing in mind what
it is one needs to
know. And yet those
with the courage to
tread this path to
real discovery are
not only offered
practically no
guidance on how to
do so, they are
actively discouraged
and have to set
about it in secret,
pretending meanwhile
to be diligently
engaged in the
frantic diversions
and to conform with
the deadening
personal opinions
which are
continually being
thrust upon them.
Bourbaki
Structures are the weapons of the mathematician.
Bridgman, P. W.
It is the merest truism, evident at once to unsophisticated observation, that mathematics is a human invention.
The Logic of Modern Physics, New York, 1972.