J. W. N. Sullivan Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

It is much easier to make measurements than to know exactly what you are measuring.

J. W. N. Sullivan
To be willing to suffer in order to create is one thing; to realize that one's creation necessitates one's suffering, that suffering is one of the greatest of God's gifts, is almost to reach a mystical solution of the problem of evil.

J. W. N. Sullivan
It is certain that the real function of art is to increase our self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics, in its own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art.

J. W. N. Sullivan
The mathematician is entirely free, within the limits of his imagination, to construct what worlds he pleases. What he is to imagine is a matter for his own caprice; he is not thereby discovering the fundamental principles of the universe nor becoming acquainted with the ideas of God.

J. W. N. Sullivan
The present tendency of physics is toward describing the universe in terms of mathematical relations between unimaginable entities.

J. W. N. Sullivan
Science, indeed, tells us a very great deal less about the universe than we have been accustomed to suppose, and there is no reason to believe that all we can ever know must be couched in terms of its thin and largely arbitrary abstractions.

J. W. N. Sullivan
Outside their views on purely scientific matters there is nothing characteristic of men of science.

J. W. N. Sullivan
The measure in which science falls short of art is the measure in which it is incomplete as science.

J. W. N. Sullivan
To judge from the history of science, the scientific method is excellent as a means of obtaining plausible conclusions which are always wrong, but hardly as a means of reaching the truth.

J. W. N. Sullivan
A history of mathematics is largely a history of discoveries which no longer exist as separate items, but are merged into some more modern generalization, these discoveries have not been forgotten or made valueless. They are not dead, but transmuted.

J. W. N. Sullivan
Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, as the history of science proves, is an aim with an irresistible fascination for mankind, and which needs no defense. The mere fact that science does, to a great extent, gratify our intellectual curiosity, is a sufficient reason for its existence.

J. W. N. Sullivan
Since the primary object of the scientific theory is to express the harmonies which are found to exist in nature, we see at once that these theories must have an aesthetic value. The measure of the success of a scientific theory is, in fact, a measure of its aesthetic value, since it is a measure of the extent to which it has introduced harmony in what was before chaos.

J. W. N. Sullivan