“Nearly every example of faulty reasoning that has been published is accompanied by the phrase `of course’ or its equivalent.”
Donald Knuth
“Nearly every example of faulty reasoning that has been published is accompanied by the phrase `of course’ or its equivalent.”
Donald Knuth
Do you know that saying from Jerome K. Jerome? He wrote Three Men in a Boat and Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. He said “I love work. I can sit and watch it for hours.”
John Conway as quoted in Genius At Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway (2015) by Siobhan Roberts
(also see: DNA on deadlines)
The best programs are written so that computing machines can perform them quickly and so that human beings can understand them clearly. A programmer is ideally an essayist who works with traditional aesthetic and literary forms as well as mathematical concepts, to communicate the way that an algorithm works and to convince a reader that the results will be correct.
Selected Papers on Computer Science (1996)
Donald Knuth
There is nothing to do with computers that merits a PhD.
Max Newman (1897-1984), as quoted in Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges
Man is a rational animal — so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.
Unpopular Essays (1950)
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
The American Crisis, No. V (1778)
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises — not this sort of mental gladiatorship.
Scientific American, July 1859
Computing is not about computers anymore. It is about living.
Being Digital (1995)
Nicholas Negroponte
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke
When, however, the lay public rallies around an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion — the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.
Isaac Asimov
(reblogged from Futility Closet)
On two occasions I have been asked “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?“. In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question.
I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)
Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence you will see an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (1964)
Richard Feynman
Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers, you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it.
This is not yet a scientific age.
What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988)
Richard Feynman
Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.
Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic. It has engaged the industry and wisdom of ancient and modern geometers to such an extent that it would be superfluous to discuss the problem at length…Further, the dignity of the science itself seems to require that every possible means be explored for the solution of a problem so elegant and so celebrated.
Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (1801)
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)
Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.
Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
Brian Cox said something similar (even directly referring to Sagan) during his acceptance speech on receiving the Institute of Physics President’s Medal last night.
The key message is: if you’re scientifically literate the world looks very different to you.
I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. […] I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)
Richard Feynman
(HT @mattischrome for the quote)
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.
Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.
Chapter VI: The Paradoxes of Christianity, Orthodoxy (1908)
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.
Alan Turing (1912-1954), in a letter to Robin Gandy in 1954
Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001)
