"Plus un, moins un, plus un, moins un, etc. En ajoutant les deux premiers termes, les deux suivans, et ainsi du reste, on transforme la suite dans une autre dont chaque terme est zĂ©ro. Grandi, jĂ©suite italien, en avait conclu la possibilitĂ© de la crĂ©ation; parce que la suite Ă©tant toujours Ă©gale Ă ½, il voyait cette fraction naìtre d'une infinitĂ© de zĂ©ros, ou du nĂ©ant. Ce fut ainsi que Leibnitz crut voir l'image de la crĂ©ation, dans son arithmĂ©tique binaire ou il n'employait que les deux caractères zĂ©ro et l'unitĂ©. Il imagina que l'unitĂ© pouvait reprĂ©senter Dieu, et zĂ©ro, lĂ© nĂ©ant; et que l'ĂŠtre SuprĂŞme avait tirĂ© du nĂ©ant, tous les ĂŞtres; comme l'unitĂ© avec le zĂ©ro, exprime tous les nombres dans ce système. Cette idĂ©e plut tellement Ă Leibnitz, qu'il en fit part au jĂ©suite Grimaldi, prĂ©sident du tribunal des mathĂ©matiques Ă la Chine, dans l'espĂ©rance que cet emblème de la crĂ©ation convertirait au christianisme, l'empereur d'alors qui aimait particulièrement le sciences. Je ne rapporte ce trait, que pour montrer jusqu'Ă quel point les prĂ©jugĂ©s de l'enfance peuvent Ă©garer les plus grands hommes."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Pierre-Simon Laplace, Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilitésas (1814) p. 82, also partially quoted in Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930)
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…"
"If the Greeks had had a mind to reduce mathematics to one field... their only choice would have been to reduce arithm…"