Henry John Stephen Smith Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

In science error is always possible, often close at hand; and the constant necessity for being on our guard against it is one important part of the education which science provides.

Henry John Stephen Smith
For each successive class of phenomena, a new calculus or a new geometry, as the case might be, which might prove not wholly inadequate to the subtlety of nature.

Henry John Stephen Smith
If we except the great name of Newton (and the exception is one that the great Gauss himself would have been delighted to make) it is probable that no mathematician of any age or country has ever surpassed Gauss in the combination of an abundant fertility of invention with an absolute vigorousness in demonstration...

Henry John Stephen Smith
Next to the science of number, the science of space is that which is at once the most abstract, and admits of the most universal application to the study of natural phenomena. Everything that takes place takes place in space; and thus Geometry, or the science of space, necessarily intervenes in all exact observation of events.

Henry John Stephen Smith
[Arithmetic] is one of the oldest branches, perhaps the very oldest branch, of human knowledge; and yet some of its most abstruse secrets lie close to its tritest truths.

Henry John Stephen Smith
As to our knowledge of the series of the prime numbers themselves, the advance since the time of Euler has been great, if we think of the difficulty of the problem; but very small if we compare what has been done with what still remains to do.

Henry John Stephen Smith
One thing at least they have not forgotten, that geometry is nothing if it be not rigorous, and that the whole educational value of the study is lost, if strictness of demonstration be trifled with. The methods of Euclid are, by almost universal consent, unexceptionable in point of rigor. Opening Address by the President, Section A

Henry John Stephen Smith
Of all those branches of human knowledge which are comprehended under the name of Science, Arithmetic is that which has the most abstract character, and which, at the same time, is of the most universal application in the study of natural phenomena.

Henry John Stephen Smith