Smith, Henry John Stephen (1826-1883)
It is the peculiar
beauty of this
method, gentlemen,
and one which
endears it to the
really scientific
mind, that under no
circumstance can it
be of the smallest
possible utility.
In H. Eves,
Mathematical Circles
Squared, Boston:
Prindle, Weber and
Schmidt, 1972.
Soddy, Frederick (1877-1956)
Four circles to the kissing come,
The smaller are the benter.
The bend is just the inverse of
The distance from the centre.
Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb
There's now no need for rule of thumb.
Since zero bend's a dead straight line
And concave bends have minus sign,
The sum of squares of all four bends
Is half the square of their sum.
Somerville, Mary (1780-1872)
Nothing has afforded
me so convincing a
proof of the unity
of the Deity as
these purely mental
conceptions of
numerical and
mathematical science
which have been by
slow degrees
vouchsafed to man,
and are still
granted in these
latter times by the
Differential
Calculus, now
superseded by the
Higher Algebra, all
of which must have
existed in that
sublimely omniscient
Mind from eternity.
Martha Somerville
(ed.), Personal
Recollections of
Mary Somerville,
Boston, 1874.
Spengler, Oswald (1880 -1936)
The mathematic, then, is an art. As such it has its styles and style periods. It is not, as the layman and the philosopher (who is in this matter a layman too) imagine, substantially unalterable, but subject like every art to unnoticed changes form epoch to epoch. The development of the great arts ought never to be treated without an (assuredly not unprofitable) side-glance at contemporary mathematics.
Steiner, G.
For all their wealth of content, for all the sum of history and social institution invested in them, music, mathematics, and chess are resplendently useless (applied mathematics is a higher plumbing, a kind of music for the police band). They are metaphysically trivial, irresponsible. They refuse to relate outward, to take reality for arbiter. This is the source of their witchery.
The American Mathematical Monthly, v. 101, no. 9, November, 1994.
Steinmetz, Charles P.
Mathematics is the
most exact science,
and its conclusions
are capable of
absolute proof. But
this is so only
because mathematics
does not attempt to
draw absolute
conclusions. All
mathematical truths
are relative,
conditional.
In E. T. Bell, Men
of Mathematics, New
York: Simon and
Schuster, 1937.
Sternberg, S.
Kepler's principal goal was to explain the relationship between the existence of five planets (and their motions) and the five regular solids. It is customary to sneer at Kepler for this. It is instructive to compare this with the current attempts to "explain" the zoology of elementary particles in terms of irreducible representations of Lie groups.
Stewart, Ian
The successes of the differential equation paradigm were impressive and extensive. Many problems, including basic and important ones, led to equations that could be solved. A process of self-selection set in, whereby equations that could not be solved were automatically of less interest than those that could.
Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos. Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1989, p. 39.
Sullivan, John William Navin (1886 - 1937)
The mathematician is entirely free, within the limits of his imagination, to construct what worlds he pleases. What he is to imagine is a matter for his own caprice; he is not thereby discovering the fundamental principles of the universe nor becoming acquainted with the ideas of God. If he can find, in experience, sets of entities which obey the same logical scheme as his mathematical entities, then he has applied his mathematics to the external world; he has created a branch of science.
Aspects of Science, 1925.
Sullivan, John William Navin (1886-1937)
Mathematics, as much as music or any other art, is one of the means by which we rise to a complete self-consciousness. The significance of mathematics resides precisely in the fact that it is an art; by informing us of the nature of our own minds it informs us of much that depends on our minds.
Aspects of Science, 1925.
