Quote

It is a misfortune for a science to be born too late when the means of observation have become too perfect. That is what is happening at this moment with respect to physical chemistry the founders are hampered in their general grasp by third and fourth decimal places.

Henri Poincare

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henri Poincare
Age: 58 †
Born: 1854
Born: April 29
Died: 1912
Died: July 17
Astronomer
Engineer
Mathematician
Philosopher
Philosopher Of Science
Physicist
Researcher
Topologist
University Teacher
Le Cateau
Jules Henri Poincaré
Poincaré
Henri Poincare
Jules Henri Poincare
Poincare
Science
General
Observation
Decimals
Moments
Birth
Third
Hampered
Become
Late
Thirds
Misfortune
Mean
Respect
Accounts
Founders
Perfect
Happenings
Grasp
Moment
Happening
Misfortunes
Born
Physical
Fourth
Means
Places
Chemistry
Decimal

More quotes by Henri Poincare

Image
Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.
Henri Poincare
Image
. . . by natural selection our mind has adapted itself to the conditions of the external world. It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words, the most convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
Henri Poincare
Image
It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.
Henri Poincare
Image
All of mathematics is a tale about groups.
Henri Poincare
Image
Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations among objects they are indifferent to the replacement of objects by others as long the relations don't change. Matter is not important, only form interests them.
Henri Poincare
Image
Les faits ne parlent pas. Facts do not speak.
Henri Poincare
Image
Mathematicians are born, not made.
Henri Poincare
Image
It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.
Henri Poincare
Image
Just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts.
Henri Poincare
Image
Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
Henri Poincare
Image
If we wish to foresee the future of mathematics, our proper course is to study the history and present condition of the science.
Henri Poincare
Image
It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.
Henri Poincare
Image
Mathematics has a threefold purpose. It must provide an instrument for the study of nature. But this is not all: it has a philosophical purpose, and, I daresay, an aesthetic purpose.
Henri Poincare
Image
Intuition is more important to discovery than logic.
Henri Poincare
Image
...the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and of forms, of geometric elegance. It is a genuinely aesthetic feeling, which all mathematicians know
Henri Poincare
Image
But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
Henri Poincare
Image
Guessing before proving! Need I remind you that it is so that all important discoveries have been made?
Henri Poincare
Image
A sane mind should not be guilty of a logical fallacy, yet there are very fine minds incapable of following mathematical demonstrations.
Henri Poincare
Image
When the logician has resolved each demonstration into a host of elementary operations, all of them correct, he will not yet be in possession of the whole reality, that indefinable something that constitutes the unity ... Now pure logic cannot give us this view of the whole it is to intuition that we must look for it.
Henri Poincare
Image
Most striking at first is the appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long unconscious prior work.
Henri Poincare