David Berlinski Quotes - Page 2

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• An axiomatic system comprises axioms and theorems and requires a certain amount of hand-eye coordination before it works. A formal system comprises an explicit list of symbols, an explicit set of rules governing their cohabitation, an explicit list of axioms, and, above all, an explicit list of rules explicitly governing the steps that the mathematician may take in going from assumptions to conclusions. No appeal to meaning nor to intuition. Symbols lose their referential powers; inferences become mechanical.

  David Berlinski

  Eye, Hands, Intuition

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• The calculus is the story this [the Western] world first told itself as it became the modern world.

  David Berlinski

  Education, Firsts, Stories

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• The definition of a limit is essentially his [Cauchy's] creation and is as much of a miracle as those fantastic Swiss clocks of the period in which hundreds of gleaming cogs are made to celebrate not only the time and date but the phases of the moon.

  David Berlinski

  Education, Moon, Miracle

  David Berlinski (2011). “A Tour of the Calculus”, p.119, Vintage

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• In the end, every scheme and every science is justified by itself or it is not justified at all.

  David Berlinski

  Science, Justified, Ends

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• Aristotelian logic is massive and marmoreal, but every monument accumulates graffiti.

  David Berlinski

  Graffiti, Legacy, Logic

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• Validity is the touchstone of inference, and truth of judgment: the fact that vichyssoise is cold ratifies the judgment that vichyssoise is, indeed, cold, and the judgment that vichyssoise is cold expresses the fact that vichyssoise is cold.

  David Berlinski

  Judgement, Facts, Cold

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• Leibniz endeavored to provide an account of inference and judgment involving the mechanical play of symbols and very little else. The checklists that result are the first of humanity's intellectual artifacts. They express, they explain, and so they ratify a power of the mind. And, of course, they are artifacts in the process of becoming algorithms.

  David Berlinski

  Play, Humanity, Intellectual

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• However good an argument in philosophy may happen to be, it is generally not good enough.

  David Berlinski

  Philosophy, Not Good Enough, May

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• The motion of the mind is conveyed along a cloud of meaning.~ There is this paradox that we get to meaning only when we strip the meaning from symbols.

  David Berlinski

  Clouds, Mind, Paradox

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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