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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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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
Science
Logic
Anything
Issue
Nothing
Scientist
Never
Lead
Pure
Issues
Create
Alone
Tautology

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.
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What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration?
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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Guessing before proving! Need I remind you that it is so that all important discoveries have been made?
Henri Poincare
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But all of my efforts served only to make me better acquainted with the difficulty, which in itself was something.
Henri Poincare
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The mathematical facts worthy of being studied are those which, by their analogy with other facts, are capable of leading us to the knowledge of a physical law. They reveal the kinship between other facts, long known, but wrongly believed to be strangers to one another.
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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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
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Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
Henri Poincare
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Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
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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Point set topology is a disease from which the human race will soon recover.
Henri Poincare
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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
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Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
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
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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.
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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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
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But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
Henri Poincare