Quote

...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

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
Math
Forms
Geometric
Harmony
Mathematicians
Numbers
Genuinely
Beauty
Elegance
Feeling
Mathematician
Feelings
Aesthetic
Form
Mathematical

More quotes by Henri Poincare

Image
Les faits ne parlent pas. Facts do not speak.
Henri Poincare
Image
Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation They always presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge and well prepared by labour, both conscious and subconscious.
Henri Poincare
Image
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
Image
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
Henri Poincare
Image
Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means.
Henri Poincare
Image
Most striking at first is the appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long unconscious prior work.
Henri Poincare
Image
A scientist worthy of his name, about all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.
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
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
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
Image
We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
Henri Poincare
Image
Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation.
Henri Poincare
Image
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
Image
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
Image
But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
Henri Poincare
Image
It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.
Henri Poincare
Image
What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration?
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
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
Image
Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
Henri Poincare