As a science mathematics has been adapted to the description of natural phenomena, and the great practitioners in this field... have never concerned … - George Frederick James Temple

" "

As a science mathematics has been adapted to the description of natural phenomena, and the great practitioners in this field... have never concerned themselves with the logical foundations of mathematics, but have boldly taken a pragmatic view of mathematics as an intellectual machine which works successfully. Description has been verified by further observation, still more strikingly be prediction, and sometimes, more ominously, by control of natural forces. Happily, unresolved problems... still remain as challenges.

English
Collect this quote

About George Frederick James Temple

George Frederick James Temple (December 2, 1901-January 30, 1992) was an English mathematician. He was President of the London Mathematical Society in the years 1951-1953 and recipient of the Sylvester Medal in 1969.

Works in ChatGPT, Claude, or Any AI

Add semantic quote search to your AI assistant via MCP. One command setup.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by George Frederick James Temple

Mathematics has also been developed as a philosophy, in the sense in which this term is defined by A.N. Whitehead as 'the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical and necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted'. Substitute 'mathematics' for 'experience' and we have an admirable description of its speculative and philosophic development. ...Philosophy of mathematics... has its paradoxes and antimonies, and also diverse schools of thought...

The brilliant summaries by Bourbaki (1969) and Weyl (1951)... set a high standard of exposition, but... there is room for a history of mathematical ideas which will demand less mathematical expertise and offer a more detailed account of the motivation of research.

The subject matter of mathematics has increased so rapidly and extensively that there is some element of truth in maintaining that mathematics is not so much a subject as a way of studying any subject, not so much a science as a way of life. We turn, then, from the attempt to characterize the material object of mathematics to an attempt to determine its formal object, i.e., its methodology.

Loading...