Skip to content

If the question be raised, why such an apparently special problem as the quadrature of the circle, is deserving of the sustained interest which has attained to it, and which it still possesses, the answer is only to be found in a scrutiny of the history of the problem, and especially in the closeness of the connection of that history with the general history of Mathematical Science.

— E. W. Hobson Squaring the Circle (1913)

Another quote →

Topics

Mathematics

More quotes by E. W. Hobson

The quality of the human mind, considered in its collective aspect, which most strikes us, in surveying this record, is its colossal patience.

Squaring the Circle (1913)

The objects of abstract Geometry possess in absolute precision properties which are only approximately realized in the corresponding objects of physical Geometry.

Squaring the Circle (1913)

The history of our problem falls into three periods marked out by fundamentally distinct differences in respect of method, of immediate aims, and in equipment in possession of intellectual tools.

Squaring the Circle (1913)

Success, even in a comparatively limited field, is some compensation for failure in a wider field of endeavour.

Squaring the Circle (1913)

Perhaps the least inadequate description of the general scope of modern Pure Mathematics—I will not call it a definition—would be to say that it deals with form, in a very general sense of the term; this would include algebraic form, functional relationship, the relations of order in any ordered set of entities such as numbers, and the analysis of the peculiarities of form of groups of operations.

Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A (1910)

All E. W. Hobson quotes →

You may also like

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.

William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing.

Bertrand Russell

The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.

Núria Añó

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: E. W. Hobson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.