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In the old days when people invented a new function they had something useful in mind.

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
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Invented
Useful
Function
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More quotes by 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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We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
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?
Henri Poincare
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What is a good definition? For the philosopher or the scientist, it is a definition which applies to all the objects to be defined, and applies only to them it is that which satisfies the rules of logic. But in education it is not that it is one that can be understood by the pupils.
Henri Poincare
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All of mathematics is a tale about groups.
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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Ideas rose in clouds I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.
Henri Poincare
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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
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Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
Henri Poincare
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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
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When the physicists ask us for the solution of a problem, it is not drudgery that they impose on us, on the contrary, it is us who owe them thanks.
Henri Poincare
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Intuition is more important to discovery than logic.
Henri Poincare
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A sane mind should not be guilty of a logical fallacy, yet there are very fine minds incapable of following mathematical demonstrations.
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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...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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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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Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation.
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
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Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.
Henri Poincare
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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