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One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics.

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
Development
Influence
Desire
History
Happiest
Science
Mathematics
Nature
Forgotten
Remember
Constant
Would
Completely

More quotes by Henri Poincare

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Ideas rose in clouds I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.
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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.
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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.
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Doubting everything and believing everything are two equally convenient solutions that guard us from having to think
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Mathematicians do not study objects, but the relations between objects.
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It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.
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But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
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The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so.
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How is error possible in mathematics?
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Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.
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How is it that there are so many minds that are incapable of understanding mathematics? ... the skeleton of our understanding, ... and actually they are the majority. ... We have here a problem that is not easy of solution, but yet must engage the attention of all who wish to devote themselves to education.
Henri Poincare
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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?
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It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.
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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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.
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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
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Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
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Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means.
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Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
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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