The beauty of mathematics
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Transcript of The beauty of mathematics
“Mathematics does to the mind what
Music does to the soul and
Poetry to the heart”
The Beauty of
Mathematics
Aristotle (384 B.C.-322 B.C.), Poetics
Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry.
J.H.Poincare (1854-1912), (cited in H.E.Huntley, The Divine Proportion, Dover, 1970)
The mathematician does not study pure mathematics because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it and he delights in it
because it is beautiful.
Lawrence University catalog, Cited in Essays in Humanistic
Mathematics, Alvin White, ed, MAA, 1993 Mathematics is the natural home of
both abstract thought and the laws of nature. It is at once pure logic and
creative art.
G. H. Hardy (1877 - 1947), A Mathematician's Apology,
Cambridge University Press, 1994.
The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful;
the ideas, like the colors or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place
in this world for ugly mathematics.
J.Bronowski, Science and Human Values, Pelican, 1964.
Mathematics in this sense is a form of poetry, which has the same relation to the prose of practical mathematics as
poetry has to prose in any other language. The element of poetry, the
delight of exploring the medium for its own sake, is an essential ingredient in
the creative process.
Jane Muir, Of Men & Numbers, Dover, 1996. Gauss: You have no idea how much poetry there is in the calculation of a
table of logarithms!