"By all accounts mathematics is mankind’s most successful intellectual undertaking. Every problem of mathematics gets solved, sooner or later. Once solved, a mathematical problem is forever finished: no later event will disprove a correct solution. As mathematics progresses, problems that were difficult become easy and can be assigned to schoolchildren.Thus Euclidean geometry is taught in the second year of high school. Similarly, the mathematics learned by my generation in graduate school is now taught at the undergraduate level, and perhaps in the not too distant future, in the high schools. Not only is every mathematical problem solved, but eventually every mathematical problem is proved trivial. The quest for ultimate triviality is characteristic of the mathematical enterprise."
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Sources
Gian-Carlo Rota, "The Pernicious Influence of Mathematics upon Philosophy" 18 Unconventional Essays on the Nature of Mathematics (2006) p. 223, ed. .
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mathematics
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Mathematics
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