D'Alembert, Jean Le Rond (1717-1783)
Thus metaphysics and
mathematics are,
among all the
sciences that belong
to reason, those in
which imagination
has the greatest
role. I beg pardon
of those delicate
spirits who are
detractors of
mathematics for
saying this .... The
imagination in a
mathematician who
creates makes no
less difference than
in a poet who
invents .... Of all
the great men of
antiquity,
Archimedes may be
the one who most
deserves to be
placed beside Homer.
Discours
Preliminaire de
L'Encyclopedie, Tome
1, 1967, pp. 47-48.
D'Alembert, Jean Le Rond (1717-1783)
Just go on ... and
faith will soon
return.
[To a
friend hesitant with
respect to
infinitesimals.]
In P. J. Davis and
R. Hersh, The
Mathematical
Experience, Boston:
Birkhauser, 1981.
David Hilbert (1900)
This conviction of
the solvability of
every mathematical
problem is a
powerful incentive
to the worker. We
hear within us the
perpetual call:
There is a problem.
Seek its solution.
You can find it by
pure reason, for in
mathematics there is
no
ignorabimus
[we shall not know].
Jeremy Gray, The
Hilbert
Challenge (2000)
David Hilbert
[In defense of Georg
Cantor's set
theory:]
From
his paradise no one
shall ever evict us.
Manfred Schroeder,
Fractals, Chaos,
Power Laws 1991