Mathematical Beauty Quotes

On this page you will find all the quotes on the topic "Mathematical Beauty". There are currently 36 quotes in our collection about Mathematical Beauty. Discover the TOP 10 sayings about Mathematical Beauty!
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  • The tantalizing and compelling pursuit of mathematical problems offers mental absorption, peace of mind amid endless challenges, repose in activity, battle without conflict, refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings, and the sort of beauty changeless mountains present to senses tried by the present day kaleidoscope of events.

    Morris Kline (1964). “Mathematics in Western Culture”, p.470, Oxford University Press
  • Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

    "Metaphysics". Book by Aristotle. Book XIII, 1078a.33,
  • Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

    Beauty   Math   Apology  
    A Mathematician's Apology ch. 10 (1940)
  • Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty-a beauty cold and austere ... yet sublimely pure and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

    Art   Math   Perfection  
    "The Study of Mathematics" (1902)
  • Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

    "The Study of Mathematics" (1902)
  • The mathematician is fascinated with the marvelous beauty of the forms he constructs, and in their beauty he finds everlasting truth.

    Beauty   Truth   Math  
  • The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.

    Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.318, Modern Library
  • Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

  • A physical law must possess mathematical beauty.

  • It is the peculiar beauty of this method, gentlemen, and one which endears it to the really scientific mind, that under no circumstance can it be of the smallest possible utility.

    Beauty   Math   Science  
  • My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.

    Beautiful   Truth   Work  
  • The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

    Aristotle (2012). “The Metaphysics”, p.202, Roger Bishop Jones
  • It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment... It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory.

    Taken   Science   Views  
    "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature". Article republished from May 1963 issue of Scientific American, blogs.scientificamerican.com. June 25, 2010.
  • Wherever there is number, there is beauty.

  • One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories.

    Philip J. Davis, William G. Chinn (1985). “3.1416 and all that”, Birkhauser
  • What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating.

    Art   People   Appreciate  
    Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1995). “Sammlung”, p.908, Cambridge University Press
  • The perfection of mathematical beauty is such...that whatsoever is most beautiful and regular is also found to be most useful and excellent.

  • I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is.

  • It is quite clear that beauty does depend on one's culture and upbringing for certain kinds of beauty, pictures, literature, poetry and so on...But mathematical beauty is of a rather different kind. I should say perhaps it is of a completely different kind and transcends these personal factors. It is the same in all countries and at all periods of time.

    Country   Doe   Different  
  • Math is the only place where truth and beauty mean the same thing.

    Mean   Math   Science  
  • The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

    Beauty   Beautiful   Math  
    A Mathematician's Apology ch. 10 (1940)
  • The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should take simplicity into consideration in a subordinate way to beauty ... It often happens that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash, the latter must take precedence.

  • The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

    Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.229, Routledge
  • Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare.

    "Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare" l. 11 (1923)
  • As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.

    Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.17, Cosimo, Inc.
  • It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress.

    "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature" by Paul Dirac, blogs.scientificamerican.com. June 25, 2010.
  • Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the georgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

    Art   Truth   Science  
    Philosophical Essays (1910) no. 4
  • When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

  • Theoretical physicists accept the need for mathematical beauty as an act of faith... For example, the main reason why the theory of relativity is so universally accepted is its mathematical beauty.

    Science   Example   Needs  
  • The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.

    D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1992). “On Growth and Form”, p.326, Cambridge University Press
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