Gauss once said: "Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences" Assuming we've defined `queen' and `science', and established uniqueness, we have a concrete definition of mathematics. Sincerely, Adam P. Goucher
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2015 at 2:34 AM From: "Dan Asimov" <asimov@msri.org> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [math-fun] Definition of mathematics
As a grad student, ca. 1971, I came up with
"Mathematics is the science of patterns."
—Dan
On Jun 11, 2015, at 5:13 PM, Allan Wechsler <acwacw@gmail.com> wrote:
Mathematics is the study of the formal consequences of formal rules. Even more succinctly, mathematics is the study of form.
On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 6:23 PM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
A couple of weeks ago, in a gathering of mathematicians throwing out candidate definitions of mathematics, I half-seriously ventured the opinion that mathematics is the subset of philosophy consisting of those philosophical questions that actually have answers, along with the answers to those questions.
But I don't think this is original. Whom am I quoting (or paraphrasing) here?
Jim Propp _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun