Gian-Carlo Rota Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• Running overtime is the one unforgivable error a lecturer can make. After fifty minutes (one microcentury as von Neumann used to say) everybody's attention will turn elsewhere.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Running, Science, Errors

  Gian-Carlo Rota (2008). “Indiscrete Thoughts”, p.197, Springer Science & Business Media

• THE COMPUTER IS JUST AN INSTRUMENT for doing faster what we already know how to do slower. All pretensions to computer intelligence and paradise-tomorrow promises should be toned down before the public turns away in disgust. And if that should happen, our civilization might not survive.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Science, Civilization, Promise

  Mark Kac, Gian-Carlo Rota, Jacob T. Schwartz (2009). “Discrete Thoughts: Essays on Mathematics, Science and Philosophy”, p.263, Springer Science & Business Media

• It is a common public relations gimmick to give the entire credit for the solution of famous problems to the one mathematician who is responsible for the last step.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Science, Giving, Lasts

• Why is it that Serge Lange's Linear Algebra, published by no less a Verlag than Springer, ostentatiously displays the sale of a few thousand copies over a period of fifteen years, while the same title by Seymour Lipschutz in the The Schaum's Outlines will be considered a failure unless it brings in a steady annual income from the sale of a few hundred thousand copies in twenty-six languages?

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Science, Years, Fifteen

• Stan Ulam was lazy, ... He talked too much ... He was self-centered ... . He had an overpowering personality.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Science, Self, Personality

• A mathematician's work is mostly a tangle of guesswork, analogy, wishful thinking and frustration, and proof, far from being the core of discovery, is more often than not a way of making sure that our minds are not playing tricks.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Hard Work, Science, Frustration

• Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of mathematicians, which has changed little from Pythagoras to our day.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Science, Littles, Philosopher

• The apex of mathematical achievement occurs when two or more fields which were thought to be entirely unrelated turn out to be closely intertwined. Mathematicians have never decided whether they should feel excited or upset by such events.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Science, Two, Achievement

  Gian-Carlo Rota (2009). “Indiscrete Thoughts”, p.214, Springer Science & Business Media

• Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Motivation, Mean, Science

  Gian-Carlo Rota (2009). “Indiscrete Thoughts”, p.214, Springer Science & Business Media

• [In mathematics] There are two kinds of mistakes. There are fatal mistakes that destroy a theory, but there are also contingent ones, which are useful in testing the stability of a theory.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Mistake, Science, Two

• Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Science, People, Giving

• The progress of mathematics can be viewed as progress from the infinite to the finite.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Science, Progress, Infinite

• Every lecture should state one main point and repeat it over and over, like a theme with variations. An audience is like a herd of cows, moving slowly in the direction they are being driven towards. If we make one point, we have a good chance that the audience will take the right direction; if we make several points, then the cows will scatter all over the field. The audience will lose interest and everyone will go back to the thoughts they interrupted in order to come to our lecture.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Moving, Science, Order

  Gian-Carlo Rota (2008). “Indiscrete Thoughts”, p.196, Springer Science & Business Media

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