mathematical abstractions Quotes

See nature in terms of the cone, the cylinder, and the sphere.

There are things which seem incredible to most men who have not studied Mathematics.

One may say that mathematics talks about the things which are of no concern to men. Mathematics has the inhuman quality of starlight - brilliant, sharp but cold ... thus we are clearest where knowledge matters least: in mathematics, especially number theory.

What exactly is mathematics? Many have tried but nobody has really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something else.

There's something mathematically satisfying about music: notes fit together and harmony and all that. And mathematics has to do with abstractions and making connections.

Mathematics is not something that you find lying around in your back yard. It's produced by the human mind. Yet if we ask where mathematics works best, it is in areas like particle physics and astrophysics, areas of fundamental science that are very, very far removed from everyday affairs.

The world of physics is essentially the real world construed by mathematical abstractions, and the world of sense is the real world construed by the abstractions which the sense-organs immediately furnish. To suppose that the "material mode" is a primitive and groping attempt at physical conception is a fatal error in epistemology.

Mathematics deals exclusively with the relations of concepts to each other without consideration of their relation to experience.

Some things that satisfy the rules of algebra can be interesting to mathematicians even though they don't always represent a real situation.

Yet what are all such gaieties to me whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?