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
independent science reality
A reality completely independent of the spirit that conceives it, sees it, or feels it, is an impossibility. A world so external as that, even if it existed, would be forever inaccessible to us.
knowledge math logic
There are no solved problems; there are only problems that are more or less solved.
born made mathematician
Mathematicians are born, not made.
errors mathematics mathematical
How is error possible in mathematics?
desire development remember
One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics.
life beautiful nature
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.
study relation mathematician
Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects.
science thanks problem
When the physicists ask us for the solution of a problem, it is not drudgery that they impose on us, on the contrary, it is us who owe them thanks.
eye reality games
So is not mathematical analysis then not just a vain game of the mind? To the physicist it can only give a convenient language; but isn't that a mediocre service, which after all we could have done without; and, it is not even to be feared that this artificial language be a veil, interposed between reality and the physicist's eye? Far from that, without this language most of the initimate analogies of things would forever have remained unknown to us; and we would never have had knowledge of the internal harmony of the world, which is, as we shall see, the only true objective reality.
science technology numbers
Sociology is the science with the greatest number of methods and the least results.
nature work artist
A scientist worthy of his name, about all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.
self intuition way
The subliminal self is in no way inferior to the conscious self. It knows how to choose and to divine.
mind guilty logical
A sane mind should not be guilty of a logical fallacy, yet there are very fine minds incapable of following mathematical demonstrations.
order giving unity
It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details.