Eric Temple Bell Quotes About Mathematics

• Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Knowledge, Math, Science

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

• Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Intelligence, Taught

  Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 23-24, (p. 161), 1949.

• The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future...

  Eric Temple Bell

  Mistake, Past, Opportunity

  "The Development of Mathematics" by Eric Temple Bell, (p. 283), 1940.

• The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Life, Individualism, Mathematics

  Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”

• If a lunatic scribbles a jumble of mathematical symbols it does not follow that the writing means anything merely because to the inexpert eye it is indistinguishable from higher mathematics.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Writing, Mean, Eye

  Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”

• Abstractness, sometimes hurled as a reproach at mathematics, is its chief glory and its surest title to practical usefulness. It is also the source of such beauty as may spring from mathematics.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Beauty, Spring, Math

  "The Development of Mathematics" by Eric Temple Bell, (p. 9), 1940.

• Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Art, Inspiration, Past

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

• It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Graphic Design, Immortality, Mathematics

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

• The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Silly, Math, Doubt

  Eric Temple Bell (1937). “Men of Mathematics”

• A number of aspects of mathematics are not much talked about in contemporary histories of mathematics. We have in mind business and commerce, war, number mysticism, astrology, and religion. In some instances, writers, hoping to assert for mathematics a noble parentage and a pure scientific experience, have turned away their eyes. Histories have been eager to put the case for science, but the Handmaiden of the Sciences has lived a far more raffish and interesting life than her historians allow.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Mathematics, Mathematical

  "The Mathematical Experience". Book by Philip J. Davis, "Underneath the Fig Leaf," p.89, 1980.

• If "Number rules the universe" as Pythagoras asserted, Number is merely our delegate to the throne, for we rule Number.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Numbers, Thrones

  Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”

• In his wretched life of less than twenty-seven years Abel accomplished so much of the highest order that one of the leading mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century could say without exaggeration, "Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years." Asked how he had done all this in the six or seven years of his working life, Abel replied, "By studying the masters, not the pupils."

  Eric Temple Bell

  Seven Years, Order, Abel

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

• Poincaré was a vigorous opponent of the theory that all mathematics can be rewritten in terms of the most elementary notions of classical logic; something more than logic, he believed, makes mathematics what it is.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Opponents, Logic, Mathematics

• Poincaré [was] the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. ... Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in the gift of clear exposition.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Men, Vision, Lasts

• Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Engineering, Symbolism, Trying

• Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Race, Apes

• I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Understanding, Machines

  Eric Temple Bell (1988). “Mathematics, queen and servant of science”, Tempus Books

• If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Games, Paper, Mathematics

  Eric Temple Bell (1988). “Mathematics, queen and servant of science”, Tempus Books

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