James Joseph Sylvester Quotes

• The world of ideas which it [mathematics] discloses or illuminates, the contemplation of divine beauty and order which it induces, the harmonious connexion of its parts, the infinite hierarchy and absolute evidence of the truths with which it is concerned, these, and such like, are the surest grounds of the title of mathematics to human regard, and would remain unimpeached and unimpaired were the plan of the universe unrolled like a map at our feet, and the mind of man qualified to take in the whole scheme of creation at a glance.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Beauty, Men, Order

  James Joseph Sylvester (1908). “The Collected Mathematical Papers: (1870-1883)”

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• May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason? The musician feels mathematics, the mathematician thinks music: music the dream, mathematics the working life.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Music, Dream, Thinking

  James Joseph Sylvester, H. F. Baker (2012). “The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester:”, p.419, Cambridge University Press

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• Mathematics is the music of reason.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Math, Reason, Mathematics

  "Episode 038: Category Theory for Normal Humans with Dr. Eugenia Cheng". "Greater Than Code" with Rein Henrichs, www.greaterthancode.com. June 21, 2017.

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• The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Life, Wings, Long

  James Joseph Sylvester (1870). “The Laws of Verse: Or Principles of Versification Exemplified in Metrical Translations, Together with an Annotated Reprint of the Inaugural Presidential Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at Exeter”, p.122

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• A mathematical idea should not be petrified in a formalised axiomatic setting, but should be considered instead as flowing as a river.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Ideas, Rivers, Should

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• There is no study in the world which brings into more harmonious action all the faculties of the mind than [mathematics], ... or, like this, seems to raise them, by successive steps of initiation, to higher and higher states of conscious intellectual being.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Math, Mind, Intellectual

  James Joseph Sylvester (1869). “Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association, Exeter, August 19th, 1869”, p.6

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• Number, place, and combination . . . the three intersecting but distinct spheres of thought to which all mathematical ideas admit of being referred.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Ideas, Numbers, Three

  James Joseph Sylvester (2005). “The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester”, p.91, American Mathematical Soc.

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• The early study of Euclid made me a hater of geometry.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Study, Euclid, Made

  James Joseph Sylvester (1870). “The Laws of Verse: Or Principles of Versification Exemplified in Metrical Translations, Together with an Annotated Reprint of the Inaugural Presidential Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at Exeter”, p.126

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• If I were asked to name, in one word, the pole star round which the mathematical firmament revolves, the central idea which pervades the whole corpus of mathematical doctrine, I should point to Continuity as contained in our notions of space, and say, it is this, it is this!

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Stars, Names, Ideas

  James Joseph Sylvester (1973). “1854-1973”

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• The object of pure Physic[s] is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure Mathematic[s] that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Law, World, Physics

  "Memorabilia Mathematica". Book by Robert Edouard Moritz, 1914.

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• Time was when all the parts of the subject were dissevered, when algebra, geometry, and arithmetic either lived apart or kept up cold relations of acquaintance confined to occasional calls upon one another; but that is now at an end; they are drawn together and are constantly becoming more and more intimately related and connected by a thousand fresh ties, and we may confidently look forward to a time when they shall form but one body with one soul.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Life, Math, Ties

  James Joseph Sylvester (1870). “The Laws of Verse: Or Principles of Versification Exemplified in Metrical Translations, Together with an Annotated Reprint of the Inaugural Presidential Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at Exeter”, p.124

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• I know, indeed, and can conceive of no pursuit so antagonistic to the cultivation of the oratorical faculty ... as the study of Mathematics. An eloquent mathematician must, from the nature of things, ever remain as rare a phenomenon as a talking fish, and it is certain that the more anyone gives himself up to the study of oratorical effect the less will he find himself in a fit state to mathematicize.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Nature, Math, Talking

  James Joseph Sylvester (2008). “The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester”, p.72, American Mathematical Soc.

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• The object of pure Mathematic (is) that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Law, Unfolding, Humans

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• The theory of ramification is one of pure colligation, for it takes no account of magnitude or position; geometrical lines are used, but these have no more real bearing on the matter than those employed in genealogical tables have in explaining the laws of procreation.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Real, Math, Law

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• Surely with as good reason as had Archimedes to have the cylinder, cone and sphere engraved on his tombstone might our distinguished countrymen leave testamentary directions for the cubic eikosiheptagram to be engraved on theirs. Spirit of the Universe! wither are we drifting, and when, where, and how is all this to end?

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Tombstone, Science, Might

  James Joseph Sylvester (1973). “1854-1973”

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• [Mathematics] unceasingly calls forth the faculties of observation and comparison; one of its principal weapons is induction: it has frequent recourse to trial and verification; and it affords a boundless scope for the exercise of the highest efforts of imagination and invention.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Exercise, Imagination, Effort

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• Aspiring to these wide generalizations, the analysis of quadratic functions soars to a pitch from whence it may look proudly down on the feeble and vain attempts of geometry proper to rise to its level or to emulate it in its flights.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Analysis, Looks, Levels

  James Joseph Sylvester (2005). “The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester”, p.150, American Mathematical Soc.

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• As the prerogative of Natural Science is to cultivate a taste for observation, so that of Mathematics is, almost from the starting point, to stimulate the faculty of invention.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Taste, Mathematics, Natural

  James Joseph Sylvester (1870). “The Laws of Verse: Or Principles of Versification Exemplified in Metrical Translations, Together with an Annotated Reprint of the Inaugural Presidential Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at Exeter”, p.119

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• So long as a man remains a gregarious and sociable being, he cannot cut himself off from the gratification of the instinct of imparting what he is learning, of propagating through others the ideas and impressions seething in his own brain, without stunting and atrophying his moral nature and drying up the surest sources of his future intellectual replenishment.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Learning, Cutting, Math

  James Joseph Sylvester (1877). “Address Delivered by J.J. Sylvester, F.R.S. (corresponding Member of the Institute of France), Professor of Mathematics, at Johns Hopkins University on Commemoration Day, February 22, 1877”

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• It seems to be expected of every pilgrim up the slopes of the mathematical Parnassus, that he will at some point or other of his journey sit down and invent a definite integral or two towards the increase of the common stock.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Journey, Two, Down And

  James Joseph Sylvester (2008). “The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester”, p.214, American Mathematical Soc.

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• Chemistry has the same quickening and suggestive influence upon the algebraist as a visit to the Royal Academy, or the old masters may be supposed to have on a Browning or a Tennyson. Indeed it seems to me that an exact homology exists between painting and poetry on the one hand and modem chemistry and modem algebra on the other. In poetry and algebra we have the pure idea elaborated and expressed through the vehicle of language, in painting and chemistry the idea enveloped in matter, depending in part on manual processes and the resources of art for its due manifestation.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Art, Hands, Ideas

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• What a glorious title, Nature, a veritable stroke of genius to have hit upon. It is more than a cosmos, more than a universe. It includes the seen as well as the unseen, the possible as well as the actual, Nature and Nature's God, mind and matter. I am lost in admiration of the effulgent blaze of ideas it calls forth.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Nature, Science, Ideas

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