Now we can see what makes mathematics unique. Only in mathematics is there no significant correction-only extension. Once the Greeks had developed th… - Isaac Asimov

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Now we can see what makes mathematics unique. Only in mathematics is there no significant correction-only extension. Once the Greeks had developed the deductive method, they were correct in what they did, correct for all time. Euclid was incomplete and his work has been extended enormously, but it has not had to be corrected. His theorems are, every one of them, valid to this day.

Ptolemy may have developed an erroneous picture of the planetary system, but the system of trigonometry he worked out to help him with his calculations remains correct forever.

Each great mathematician adds to what came previously, but nothing needs to be uprooted. Consequently, when we read a book like A History of Mathematics, we get the picture of a mounting structure, ever taller and broader and more beautiful and magnificent and with a foundation, moreover, that is as untainted and as functional now as it was when Thales worked out the first geometrical theorems nearly 26 centuries ago.

Nothing pertaining to humanity becomes us so well as mathematics. There, and only there, do we touch the human mind at its peak.