Quote

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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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
Makes
Function
Resemble
Littles
Mass
Functions
Little
Century
Bizarre
Sometimes
Honest
Forced
Seen
Monsters
Possible
Appear
Purpose
Logic
Half
Serve

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But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
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Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
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Most striking at first is the appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long unconscious prior work.
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It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.
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The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so.
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Mathematicians are born, not made.
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It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.
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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.
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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.
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Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
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Geometry is the art of correct reasoning from incorrectly drawn figures.
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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.
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Les faits ne parlent pas. Facts do not speak.
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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.
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Guessing before proving! Need I remind you that it is so that all important discoveries have been made?
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The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.
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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.
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Mathematicians do not study objects, but the relations between objects.
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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.
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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.
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