David Berlinski

There are gaps in the fossil graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms, but where there is nothing whatsoever instead. No…

— David Berlinski

More than sixty years ago, mathematical logicians, by defining precisely the concept of an algorithm, gave content to the ancient human idea…

— David Berlinski

“The apes are, after all, behind the bars of their cages, and we are not. Eager for the experiments to begin, they…

— David Berlinski

Just who has imposed on the suffering human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for zyklon…

— David Berlinski

An axiomatic system establishes a reverberating relationship between what a mathematician assumes (the axioms) and what he or she can derive (the…

— David Berlinski

Leibniz endeavored to provide an account of inference and judgment involving the mechanical play of symbols and very little else. The checklists…

— David Berlinski

No man is obliged to be what he might have been.

— David Berlinski

Validity is the touchstone of inference, and truth of judgment: the fact that vichyssoise is cold ratifies the judgment that vichyssoise is,…

— David Berlinski

An axiomatic system comprises axioms and theorems and requires a certain amount of hand-eye coordination before it works. A formal system comprises…

— David Berlinski

At some time in the history of the universe, there were no human minds, and at some time later, there were. Within…

— David Berlinski

The world of shapes, lines, curves, and solids is as varied as the world of numbers, and it is only our long-satisfied…

— David Berlinski

"Young men wish always to dream of what they have lost." "And old men?" "Of what they have not found."

— David Berlinski

The calculus is the story this [the Western] world first told itself as it became the modern world.

— David Berlinski

Darwin's theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudians…

— David Berlinski

Arithmetic is where the content lies, and not logic; but logic prompts certainty, and not arithmetic.

— David Berlinski

Aristotelian logic is massive and marmoreal, but every monument accumulates graffiti.

— David Berlinski