Logic is the hygiene the mathematician practices to keep his ideas healthy and strong.
Hermann WeylRead
Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you may define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty and perfection.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Symmetry reflects our quest for understanding order and beauty in life.
In this quote, Hermann Weyl emphasizes the importance of symmetry as a concept that has been pursued by humanity throughout history. He suggests that symmetry represents not only a mathematical or aesthetic ideal but also a deeper philosophical idea through which people seek to make sense of the world, aiming for harmony, balance, and perfection in their creations and understanding of nature.
Themes
SymmetryBeautyOrderPerfectionPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on aesthetics, you might quote this to highlight the importance of symmetry in art.
More from Hermann Weyl
All quotes βWithout the concepts, methods and results found and developed by previous generations right down to Greek antiquity one cannot understand either the aims or achievements of mathematics in the last 50 years. [Said in 1950]
Hermann WeylRead
We are not very pleased when we are forced to accept a mathematical truth by virtue of a complicated chain of formal conclusions and computations, which we traverse blindly, link by link, feeling our way by touch. We want first an overview of the aim and of the road; we want to understand the idea of the proof, the deeper context.
Hermann WeylRead
Besides language and music, mathematics is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind.
Hermann WeylRead
You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality.
Hermann WeylRead
Besides language and music, it [mathematics] is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind, and it is the universal organ for world understanding through theoretical construction. Mathematics must therefore remain an essential element of the knowledge and abilities which we have to teach, of the culture we have to transmit, to the next generation.
Hermann WeylRead
Similar quotes
The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.
Terry PratchettRead
When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.
George R. R. MartinRead
If God had made a perfect world, it would be a magic trick, not creation, with no meaning or place for us to learn and create. Mankind is not yet ready for a perfect world. We do not know how to appreciate perfection.
Bernie SiegelRead
How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers The buck in the snow . . . Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.
Edna St. Vincent MillayRead
No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind.
Mark HelprinRead
Dwelling is not primarily inhabiting but taking care of and creating that space within which something comes into its own and flourishes.
Martin HeideggerRead