Chemistry has the same quickening and suggestive influence upon the algebraist as a visit to the Royal Academy, or the old masters may be supposed to have on a Browning or a Tennyson. Indeed it seems to me that an… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share Image
Time was when all the parts of the subject were dissevered, when algebra, geometry, and arithmetic either lived apart or kept up cold relations of acquaintance confined to occasional calls upon one another; but that is now at an end;… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share Image
...There is no study in the world which brings into more harmonious action all the faculties of the mind than [mathematics], ... or, like… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
Number, place, and combination . . . the three intersecting but distinct spheres of thought to which all mathematical ideas admit of being referred. — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
The world of ideas which it [mathematics] discloses or illuminates, the contemplation of divine beauty and order which it induces, the harmonious connexion of… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
The object of pure physics is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure mathematics that of unfolding the… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
As the prerogative of Natural Science is to cultivate a taste for observation, so that of Mathematics is, almost from the starting point, to… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
[Mathematics] unceasingly calls forth the faculties of observation and comparison; one of its principal weapons is induction: it has frequent recourse to trial and… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
Aspiring to these wide generalizations, the analysis of quadratic functions soars to a pitch from whence it may look proudly down on the feeble… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
“Mathematics is not a book confined within a cover and bound between brazen clasps, whose contents it need only patience to ransack; it is… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
The object of pure Physic[s] is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure Mathematic[s] that of unfolding the… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
Chemistry has the same quickening and suggestive influence upon the algebraist as a visit to the Royal Academy, or the old masters may be… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
The theory of ramification is one of pure colligation, for it takes no account of magnitude or position; geometrical lines are used, but these… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
The object of pure Mathematic (is) that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence. — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason? — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
So long as a man remains a gregarious and sociable being, he cannot cut himself off from the gratification of the instinct of imparting… — James Joseph Sylvester Copy Share
