Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the spirit of chemistry... If mathematical analysis should ever had prominent place in chemistry - an aberration, which is happily almost impossible - it would be a rapid and widespread degeneration of that science.
Auguste Comte in Philosophie Positive (1832)
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Mathematical calculation
Mathematical calculation failed
Life succeeded with full swim
With formula of love and affection
It is correct mathematical calculation.
poem by Gajanan Mishra
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The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic.
quote by Ronald Fisher
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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, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.
quote by Johann Von Neumann
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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, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.
quote by John Von Neumann
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The principal aim of mathematical education is to develop certain faculties of the mind, and among these intuition is not the least precious. It is through it that the mathematical world remains in touch with the real world, and even if pure mathematics could do without it, we should still have to have recourse to it to fill up the gulf that separates the symbol from reality.
quote by Henri Poincare
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In teaching, I wanted to offer a general pharmacology course based on chemical principles, biochemical classification and mathematical modelling. In the event I achieved neither of my ambitions.
quote by James W. Black
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A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street.
quote by David Hilbert
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Honourable Employment
O my lord, lie not idle:
The chiefest action for a man of great spirit
Is never to be out of action. We should think
The soul was never put into the body,
Which has so many rare and curious pieces
Of mathematical motion, to stand still.
Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds;
In the trenches for the soldier: in the wakeful study
For the scholar; in the furrows of the sea
For men of our profession; of all which
Arise and spring up honour.
poem by John Webster
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The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved.
quote by Paul Dirac
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How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated developments.
quote by David Hilbert
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The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
quote by Stephen Hawking
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The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
quote by Albert Einstein
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Models
The model of principle so fastened to my shirt
Escapes and encapsulates my authority, all alone.
The ire in my breath carries me on a wide arc,
And the effort dissolves to make a circle of action.
Rambling and reading is the action of strength,
I am with vengeance and all the length of a square.
The models are actually against me,
Mathematical principles abide in the house,
As the models speak chemistry, and all of science.
poem by Naveed Akram
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I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. . . But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a little mad.
quote by Alfred North Whitehead
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If Mathematics were not, "nothing would have been" neither zero (Digits 0-9 was invented by Indians, no Arabs) nor Physics, Chemistry or Architecture, no wheel and no Computer, no Printing and no Phone, no Informatics or Cybernetics. But to all these material entities invented by man, mathematical helps man to think about life, create and imagine, to love nature and his fellows to be emotional and courageous, be consistent and orderly to dream and be happy.
Marin Vlada in ICVL Project - News Technologies in Education and Research (2015)
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Face My Nemesis
Amid the office noise I am learning @
is called ‘arobase' - a quarter to three is
trois heures moins le quart, three minus a
quarter - enough to shut my brain down,
numbers have a deadly impact on me
Stop all synapses firing at once, I turn
into a dunce, stare vacantly at pages
of information I can't understand, why
should life be thus, as a mathematical
genius I could have been rich
In a universe that can be described in a
world famous mathematical equation
where E is energy, m mass, c the
speed of light, whatever it means -
everything is relative
And I must face my nemesis, numbers
expressed in French in a minefield of
arobases while telling time, I'm sinking
into the depths of my black hole brain,
information goes in - but never
Comes out again…
poem by Margaret Alice Second
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There are two methods for the literary study of any book - the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view.
quote by Lafcadio Hearn
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There has to be a mathematical explanation for how bad that tie is.
quote by Russell Crowe
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The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.
One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.
quote by Stephen Hawking
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