Ontology quotes
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Our account does not rob the mathematicians of their science... In point of fact they do not need the infinite and do not use it.
-- Aristotle -
The line has magnitude in one way, the plane in two ways, and the solid in three ways, and beyond these there is no other magnitude because the three are all.
-- Aristotle -
My opinion of mankind is founded upon the mournful fact that, so far as I can see, they find within themselves the means of believing in a thousand times as much as there is to believe in.
-- Augustus De Morgan -
Mathematics is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional propositions.
-- Charles Sanders Peirce -
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ALGEBRA is a general Method of Computation by certain Signs and Symbols which have been contrived for this Purpose, and found convenient.
-- Colin Maclaurin -
We must revisit the idea that science is a methodology and not an ontology.
-- Deepak Chopra -
The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation of it.
-- Eugene Wigner -
It is well known that the central problem of the whole of modern mathematics is the study of transcendental functions defined by differential equations.
-- Felix Klein -
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Utopia would seem to offer the spectacle of one of those rare phenomena whose concept is indistinguishable from its reality, whose ontology coincides with its representation.
-- Fredric Jameson -
This view [of the infinite], which I consider to be the sole correct one, is held by only a few. While possibly I am the very first in history to take this position so explicitly, with all of its logical consequences, I know for sure that I shall not be the last!
-- Georg Cantor -
A first fact should surprise us, or rather would surprise us if we were not used to it. How does it happen there are people who do not understand mathematics? If mathematics invokes only the rules of logic, such as are accepted by all normal minds...how does it come about that so many persons are here refractory?
-- Henri Poincare -
A good proof is one that makes us wiser.
-- IU?. I. Manin -
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If, as you teach, the universe has no beginning and no end, why should we?
-- Janet Morris -
Brilliant. The Ontology Project is a post-graduate course in card magic.
-- Jim Steinmeyer -
Infinity is a dark illimitable ocean, without bound.
-- John Milton -
It is the faithfulness of God that allows epistemology to model ontology.
-- John Polkinghorne -
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Calculus works by making visible the infinitesimally small.
-- Keith Devlin -
The slicing technique from Flatland still remains one of the most powerful tools for dealing with aggregates in higher dimensions.
-- Thomas Banchoff -
Today the major reason for our interest in Flatland is that for the first time we can achieve some of the dreams of our ancestors a century ago and obtain direct visual experience of phenomena in a dimension higher than our own.
-- Thomas Banchoff -
The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct "actuality" of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however.
-- Werner Heisenberg -
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In my paper the fact the XY was not equal to YX was very disagreeable to me. I felt this was the only point of difficulty in the whole scheme...and I was not able to solve it.
-- Werner Heisenberg -
Our acceptance of an ontology is, I think, similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory, say a system of physics;we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged.
-- Willard Van Orman Quine -
I'm apt to get drunk on words...Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being.
-- Madeleine L'Engle
