William Thomson on Mathematics
1824–1907 Northern Ireland
← All quotes by William Thomson
4 quotes
Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.
Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.
Life of Lord Kelvin (1910)
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
Now I think hydrodynamics is to be the root of all physical science, and is at present second to none in the beauty of its mathematics.