"An oral tradition makes it possible to indicate the line segments with the fingers; one can emphasize essentials and point out how the proof was found. All of this disappears in the written formulation... as soon as some external cause brought about an interruption in the oral tradition, and only books remained, it became very difficult to assimilate the work of the great predursors, and next to impossible to pass beyond it."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
, Ontwakende wetenschap (1950) translated as Science Awakening (1954) by p.266.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mathematical_proof
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Mathematical proof
43 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Mathematical proof →
Related Quotes
"The physicists didn't want to be bothered with the idea that maybe quantum theory is only provisional. A horn of plen…"
"Now Gödel's proof, Russell's original paradox, all these things, all stem from one common root which is inherent in a…"
"In the summer of 1914 I attended Frege's course, Logik in der Mathematik. Here he examined critically some of the cus…"
"On the subject of demonstrations, it is to be remarked that the Hindu mathematicians proved propositions both algebra…"
"Pythagoras did not possess a proof of the theorem which bears his name... he was temperamentally uninterested in proo…"
"Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself."
"Another roof, another proof."
"Paul Erdős, although an atheist, spoke of an imaginary book, in which God has written down all the most beautiful mat…"
"It really is worth the trouble to invent a new symbol if we can thus remove not a few logical difficulties and ensure…"
"The great masters of modern analysis are Lagrange, Laplace, and Gauss, who were contemporaries. It is interesting to …"