When you love a problem, its contours, obstacles and resistances are all just part of its character.
Steven StrogatzRead
One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise be hidden.
Interpretation
Mathematics offers a unique perspective to uncover hidden patterns in the world around us.
The quote by Steven Strogatz highlights the joy and enlightenment that comes from viewing the world through a mathematical lens. It suggests that by applying mathematical principles and thinking, one can reveal intricate and often overlooked patterns in everyday life, leading to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the universe's structure and complexity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a math class to inspire students to appreciate the beauty of mathematics.
When you love a problem, its contours, obstacles and resistances are all just part of its character.
In mathematics, our freedom lies in the questions we ask β and in how we pursue them β but not in the answers awaiting us.
Logic leaves us no choice. In that sense, math always involves both invention and discovery: we invent the concepts but discover their consequences. β¦ in mathematics our freedom lies in the questions we ask β and in how we pursue them β but not in the answers awaiting us.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.
It seemed, indeed, that the study of light-scattering might carry one into the deepest problems of physics and chemistry, and it was this belief which led to the subject becoming the main theme of our activities at Calcutta from that time onwards.
I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company. I tell my students to try to know molecules, so well that when they have some question involving molecules, they can ask themselves, What would I do if I were that molecule? I tell them, Try to feel like a molecule; and if you work hard, who knows? Some day you may get to feel like a big molecule!
Science is among the most profoundly human of our activities. Far from being subsumed by the dehumanising effects of technology, science, in fact, remains our last stand against it.
The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience.
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