Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos. - Eric Temple Bell

Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth; some of its rivals do. That science is in some respects inhuman may be the secret of its success in alleviating human misery and mitigating human stupidity.

Fashion as king is sometimes a very stupid ruler. As was observed a little way back, the kernel of Plücker's theory of geometric dimensionality is that the dimensionality of a given space is not an absolute constant, but depends upon the elements, accepted as irreducible, in terms of which the space is described.

[L]ogarithms are one of the most disorderly battlegrounds in mathematical history. ...Disputes like this and the other over the calculus have made more than one man of science envy his successors of ten thousand years hence, to whom Newton and Leibniz, Napier and Bürgi, and scores of lesser contestants for individual fame will be semimythical figures as indistinct as Pythagoras.