All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us.... This is the easiest of sciences,... a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they'll be... proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense. An anthrop...omorphous ape, if he could take a dispassionate view of his own case, would admit that though he could form an artful plan to plunder a garden--though he could use stones for fighting or for breaking open nuts, yet that the thought of fashioning a stone into a tool was quite beyond his scope. Still less, as he would admit, could he follow out a train of metaphysical reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect on God, or admire a grand natural scene. Some apes, however, would probably declare that they could and did admire the beauty of the coloured skin and fur of their partners in marriage. They would admit, that though they could make other apes understand by cries some of their perceptions and simpler wants, the notion of expressing definite ideas by definite sounds had never crossed their minds. They might insist that they were ready to aid their fellow-apes of the same troop in many ways, to risk their lives for them, and to take charge of their orphans; but they would be forced to acknowledge that disinterested love for all living creatures, the most noble attribute of man, was quite beyond their comprehension. Nevertheless, the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is one of degree and not of kind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains f...rom any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A free-enterprise economy depends only on markets, and according to the most advanced mathematical macroeconomic theory, markets d...epend only on moods: specifically, the mood of the men in the pinstripes, also known as the Boys on the Street. When the Boys are in a good mood, the market thrives; when they get scared or sullen, it is time for each one of us to look into the retail apple business.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you... will, balances itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We learn geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of th...e sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"What we know, is a point to what we do not know." Open any recent journal of science, and weigh the problems suggested concerning... Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, Physiology, Geology, and judge whether the interest of natural science is likely to be soon exhausted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An accurate charting of the American woman's progress through history might look more like a corkscrew tilted slightly to one side..., its loops inching closer to the line of freedom with the passage of time--but like a mathematical curve approaching infinity, never touching its goal. . . . Each time, the spiral turns her back just short of the finish line.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »