Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Every sect, as one knows, is a ground of error; there are no sects of geometers, algebraists, arithmeticians, because all the propositions of geometry, algebra and arithmetic are true. In every other science one may be deceived. What Thomist or Scotist theologian would dare say seriously that he is sure of his case?
There are yet fewer students of man than of geometry. “People in general are called neither poets nor geometers, although they have all that in them, and are capable of being judges of it. They are not specifically marked out. When they enter a room, they speak of the subject on hand.
As soon as he wishes to quit the domain of abstract relations, the calculator has occasion to employ the roots of these equations; thus the art of discovering them by the aid of an uniform method, either exactly or by approximation, did not fail at an early period to excite the attention of geometers.
Fabre understood then and there that he could do decidedly better than to stick to mathematics, though his whole career would feel the effects of that study. "Geometers are made; naturalists are born ready-made," he wrote to his brother, still excited by this incident, "and you know better than any one whether natural history is not my favourite science."
He was killed by Roman soldiers when Syracuse was taken; and the Sicilians so soon forgot his greatness that in the time of Cicero they did not know where his tomb was. Eratosthenes was another of the famous geometers of antiquity, and did much to improve geometrical analysis. He was also a philosopher and geographer.
Geometers and astronomers are justly occupied as much with the figure and physical constitution which the earth might have had in remote ages as with its present figure and constitution.
Still, the doubts expressed by the Commissioners of the Academy reverted incessantly to his recollection. From the very beginning they had poisoned the pleasure of his triumph. These first impressions, added to a high susceptibility, explain how Fourier ended by regarding with a certain degree of displeasure the efforts of those geometers who endeavoured to improve his theory.
Do you realize thoroughly the extreme folly of saying that it is a blind cause that arranges that the square of a planet's revolution is always to the square of the revolutions of other planets, as the cube of its distance is to the cube of the distances of the others to the common centre? Either the heavenly bodies are great geometers, or the Eternal Geometer has arranged the heavenly bodies.
The rigid methods employed by modern geometers have deposed Euclid from his pinnacle of correctness. It was thought, until recent times, that, as Sir Henry Savile remarked in 1621, there were only two blemishes in Euclid, the theory of parallels and the theory of proportion. It is now known that these are almost the only points in which Euclid is free from blemish.
Modern mathematicians may not have the patience to go through his investigations, since the conclusions he arrived at may now be reached by shorter methods; but the great conclusions of the old geometers were reached by only prodigious mathematical power.
Word Of The Day