Henri Poincare
Henri Poincare
Jules Henri Poincaréwas a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and a philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as The Last Universalist by Eric Temple Bell, since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth29 April 1854
CountryFrance
witty cat nerves
A cat is witty, he has nerve, he knows how to do precisely the right thing at the right moment.
intuition logic prove-it
It is with logic that one proves; it is with intuition that one invents.
life abstract entity
Talk with M. Hermite. He never evokes a concrete image, yet you soon perceive that the more abstract entities are to him like living creatures.
truth often-is wonder
We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
believe independent reality
This harmony that human intelligence believes it discovers in nature - does it exist apart from that intelligence? No, without doubt, a reality completely independent of the spirit which conceives it, sees it or feels it, is an impossibility. A world so exterior as that, even if it existed, would be forever inaccessible to us. But what we call objective reality is, in the last analysis, that which is common to several thinking beings, and could be common to all; this common part, we will see, can be nothing but the harmony expressed by mathematical laws.
zero mean numbers
Zero is the number of objects that satisfy a condition that is never satisfied. But as never means "in no case", I do not see that any progress has been made.
disease generations mathematics
Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
errors produce latter
A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter.
science causes chance
A very small cause, which escapes us, determines a considerable effect which we cannot ignore, and we say that this effect is due to chance.
science
Deviner avant de démontrer! Ai-je besoin de rappeler que c'est ainsi que se sont faites toutes les découvertes importantes.
moving two space
Absolute space, that is to say, the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence.... The two propositions: "The earth turns round" and "it is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round" have the same meaning; there is nothing more in the one than in the other.
reality views giving
When the logician has resolved each demonstration into a host of elementary operations, all of them correct, he will not yet be in possession of the whole reality, that indefinable something that constitutes the unity ... Now pure logic cannot give us this view of the whole; it is to intuition that we must look for it.
race disease topology
Point set topology is a disease from which the human race will soon recover.
facts doe language
All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity. Moreover, this prediction once made, it evidently does not depend upon him whether it is fulfilled or not.