René Thom Quotes

3 Sourced Quotes

If we admit a priori that science is just acquisition of knowledge, that is, building an inventory of all observable phenomena in a given disciplinary domain — then, obviously, any science is empirical.

René Thom

The spirit of geometry circulates almost everywhere in the immense body of mathematics, and it is a major pedagogical error to seek to eliminate it.

René Thom

Everything considered, mathematicians should have the courage of their most profound convictions and thus affirm that mathematical forms indeed have an existence that is independent of the mind considering them.... Yet, at any given moment, mathematicians have only an incomplete and fragmentary view of this world of ideas.

René Thom