It is exceptional that one should be able to acquire the understanding of a process without having previously acquired a deep familiarity with running it, with using it, before one has assimilated it in an instinctive and empirical way... Thus any discussion of the nature of intellectual effort in any field is difficult, unless it presupposes an easy, routine familiarity with that field. In mathematics this limitation becomes very severe.
Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations. - John Von Neumann
Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations.
- John Von Neumann
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, w… - John Von Neumann
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, w…
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. - John Von Neumann
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.
Science, as well as technology, will in the near and in the farther future increasingly turn from problems of intensity, substance, and energy, to pr… - John Von Neumann
Science, as well as technology, will in the near and in the farther future increasingly turn from problems of intensity, substance, and energy, to pr…
Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. - John Von Neumann
Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine whi… - John Von Neumann
You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine whi…
Problems are often stated in vague terms... because it is quite uncertain what the problems really are. - John Von Neumann
Problems are often stated in vague terms... because it is quite uncertain what the problems really are.
All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control. - John Von Neumann
All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control.
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is. - John Von Neumann
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
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