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Carl Friedrich Gauss
52 quotes
“I am almost amazed that you consider a professional philosopher capable of no confusion in concepts and definitions. Such things are nowhere more at home than among philosophers who are not mathematicians, and Wolff was no mathematician, even though he made cheap compen- diums. Look around among the philosophers of today, among Schelling, Hegel, Nees von Esenbeck, and their like; doesn t your hair stand on end at their definitions? Read in the history of ancient philosophy what kinds of definitions the men of that day, Plato and others, gave (I except Aristotle). But even in Kant it is often not much better; in my opinion his distinction between analytic and synthetic theorems is such a one that either peters out in a triviality or is false.”
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 362
“Gauss's aim was always to give his investigations the form of perfect works of art. He would not rest sooner and never gave a piece of work to the public until he had given it the perfection of form he desired for it. A good building should not show its scaffolding when completed, he used to say. In his demonstrations he used almost entirely the synthetic method, which he had come to prize through his studies of Archimedes and Newton. It is distinguished from the analytic method by its brevity and comprehensiveness. But the road leading to the discovery remains veiled; and indeed it often seems that Gauss frequently and intentionally turned aside from the road that led to mere instruction.”
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as quoted by Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen in his 1856 Carl Friedrich Gauss: A Memorial (pg67 of Helen Worthington Gauss's 1966 English translation)