Henri Poincaré - Language Quotes

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All laws are deduced from experiment; but to enunciate them, a special language is needful. Ordinary language is too poor... This is one reason why the physicist can not do without mathematics; it furnishes him the only language he can speak. And a well-made language is no indifferent thing.

Henri Poincaré

All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity. Moreover, this prediction once made, it evidently does not depend upon him whether it is fulfilled or not.

Henri Poincaré

The scientific fact is only the crude fact translated into a convenient language.

Henri Poincaré

The facts of geometry are naught else than the facts of algebra and analytical geometry expressed in another language.

Henri Poincaré

Nothing but facts are of importance. John Lackland passed by here. Here is something that is admirable. Here is a reality for which I would give all the theories in the world." That is the language of the historian. The physicist would say rather: "John Lackland passed by here; that makes no difference to me, for he never will pass this way again."

Henri Poincaré