Quote

Mathematics is of two kinds, Rigorous and Physical. The former is Narrow: the latter Bold and Broad. To have to stop to formulate rigorous demonstrations would put a stop to most physico-mathematical inquiries. Am I to refuse to eat because I do not fully understand the mechanism of digestion?

Oliver Heaviside

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Oliver Heaviside
Age: 74 †
Born: 1850
Born: May 18
Died: 1925
Died: February 3
Electrical Engineer
Engineer
Mathematician
Physicist
Telegraphist
London
England
Would
Refuse
Broads
Inquiries
Kinds
Broad
Formulate
Mathematics
Narrow
Demonstrations
Physical
Mechanism
Rigorous
Stop
Latter
Digestion
Understand
Mathematical
Demonstration
Two
Former
Inquiry
Kind
Fully
Bold

More quotes by Oliver Heaviside

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Why should I refuse a good dinner simply because I don't understand the digestive processes involved?
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Logic can be patient, for it is eternal.
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If it is love that makes the world go round, it is self-induction that makes electromagnetic waves go round the world.
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Euclid for children is barbarous.
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However absurd it may seem, I do in all seriousness hereby declare that I am animated mainly by philanthropic motives. I desire to do good to my fellow creatures, even to the Cui bonos.
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We do not dwell in the Palace of Truth. But, as was mentioned to me not long since, There is a time coming when all things shall be found out. I am not so sanguine myself, believing that the well in which Truth is said to reside is really a bottomless pit.
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...there is no absolute scale of size in nature, and the small may be as important, or more so than the great.
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Facts are of not much use, considered as facts. They bewilder by their number and their apparent incoherency. Let them be digested into theory, however, and brought into mutual harmony, and it is another matter.
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Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?
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The best result of mathematics is to be able to do without it.
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Theory is the essence of facts. Without theory scientific knowledge would be only worthy of the madhouse.
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It is shocking that young people should be addling their brains over mere logical subtleties in Euclid's Elements, trying to understand the proof of one obvious fact in terms of something equally .. obvious.
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Mathematics is an experimental science, and definitions do not come first, but later on.
Oliver Heaviside