Science and Method QUOTES

1 " If we wish to foresee the future of mathematics, our proper course is to study the history and present condition of the science. "

― Henri Poincaré , Science and Method

3 " Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a distance one upon another, but this action is so slight at great distances that their trajectories are rectilineal; nevertheless, from time to time, two of them may come near enough together to be deviated from their course, like a comet that passed too close to Jupiter. In a word, in the eyes of a giant, to whom our Suns were what our atoms are to us, the Milky Way would only look like a bubble of gas. "

― Henri Poincaré , Science and Method

5 " The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp. "

― Henri Poincaré , Science and Method

7 " It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better. "

― Henri Poincaré , Science and Method