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Most striking at first is the appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long unconscious prior work.
Henri Poincare
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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
Firsts
Prior
First
Striking
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Subconscious
Long
Manifest
Sudden
Unconscious
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Appearance
Illumination
More quotes by Henri Poincare
Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings why, in his opinion, “Science for Science's sake” is an absurd conception. We cannot know all the facts, since they are practically infinite in number. We must make a selection. Is it not better to be guided by utility, by our practical, and more especially our moral, necessities?
Henri Poincare
It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.
Henri Poincare
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
Henri Poincare
In the old days when people invented a new function they had something useful in mind. Now, they invent them deliberately just to invalidate our ancestors' reasoning, and that is all they are ever going to get out of them.
Henri Poincare
We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
Henri Poincare
What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration?
Henri Poincare
I entered an omnibus to go to some place or other. At that moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with non-Euclidean geometry.
Henri Poincare
Analyse data just so far as to obtain simplicity and no further.
Henri Poincare
The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.
Henri Poincare
Les faits ne parlent pas. Facts do not speak.
Henri Poincare
Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
Henri Poincare
Guessing before proving! Need I remind you that it is so that all important discoveries have been made?
Henri Poincare
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
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
Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means.
Henri Poincare
. . . 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
It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.
Henri Poincare
If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living
Henri Poincare
Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.
Henri Poincare
Why is it that showers and even storms seem to come by chance, so that many people think it quite natural to pray for rain or fine weather, though they would consider it ridiculous to ask for an eclipse by prayer.
Henri Poincare
