"If the Greeks had had a mind to reduce mathematics to one field... their only choice would have been to reduce arithmetic to geometry... it is hardly surprising that for nearly two millennia geometry took pride of place in mathematics. And it would have been obvious to any mathematician that a geometrical problem could not be stated or solved in the language of numbers, since the geometrical universe had more structure than the numerical universe. If one desired to translate geometrical problems into the language of numbers, one would have to invent (or discover) more numbers."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Tim Maudlin, New Foundations for Physical Geometry: The Theory of Linear Structures (2014) p. 12
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
History of mathematics
159 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by History of mathematics →
Related Quotes
"The authors hope by publishing this work to demonstrate that the Arabs were not only transmitters of other cultures, …"
"In England, where it originated, the calculus fared less well. ...by siding completely with Newton in the priority di…"
"The evolution of number into the 'transfinite' was included only to emphasize the power of the forces acting within m…"
"The excellent work of Tropfke is an example of the tendency to break away from the mere chronological recital of facts."
"The mathematical genius can only carry on from the point which mathematical knowledge within his culture has already …"
"The Greeks studied the conic sections from a purely geometric point of view. But the invention of in the seventeenth …"
"The field of mathematics is now so extensive that no one can [any] longer pretend to cover it, least of all the speci…"
"Those people who do mathematics—the 'mathematicians'—are not only the possessors of the cultural element known as mat…"
"The fact that arithmetic and geometry took such a notable step forward... was due in no small measure to the introduc…"
"Plato denied explicitly the existence of fractional numbers: the numerical unit had no parts and could not be divided…"