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. . . 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

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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
Natural
Selection
True
External
Mind
Mathematical
World
Math
Advantageous
Mathematics
Adapted
Species
Geometry
Conditions
Convenient
Words
Adopted

More quotes by Henri Poincare

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A reality completely independent of the spirit that conceives it, sees it, or feels it, is an impossibility. A world so external as that, even if it existed, would be forever inaccessible to us.
Henri Poincare
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...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
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Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
Henri Poincare
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Pure logic could never lead us to anything but tautologies it can create nothing new not from it alone can any science issue.
Henri Poincare
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Logic sometimes makes monsters. For half a century we have seen a mass of bizarre functions which appear to be forced to resemble as little as possible honest functions which serve some purpose.
Henri Poincare
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Zero is the number of objects that satisfy a condition that is never satisfied. But as never means in no case, I do not see that any progress has been made.
Henri Poincare
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It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.
Henri Poincare
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Intuition is more important to discovery than logic.
Henri Poincare
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The subliminal self is in no way inferior to the conscious self. It knows how to choose and to divine.
Henri Poincare
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We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
Henri Poincare
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But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
Henri Poincare
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It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.
Henri Poincare
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Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.
Henri Poincare
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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
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Mathematicians do not deal in objects, but in relations between objects thus, they are free to replace some objects by others so long as the relations remain unchanged. Content to them is irrelevant: they are interested in form only.
Henri Poincare
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Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new it alone can give us certainty.
Henri Poincare
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Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means.
Henri Poincare
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For a long time the objects that mathematicians dealt with were mostly ill-defined one believed one knew them, but one represented them with the senses and imagination but one had but a rough picture and not a precise idea on which reasoning could take hold.
Henri Poincare
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All great progress takes place when two sciences come together, and when their resemblance proclaims itself, despite the apparent disparity of their substance.
Henri Poincare
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If we ought not to fear mortal truth, still less should we dread scientific truth. In the first place it can not conflict with ethics? But if science is feared, it is above all because it can give no happiness? Man, then, can not be happy through science but today he can much less be happy without it.
Henri Poincare