Reuben Hersh Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

Mathematics is the one subject in which time is irrelevant.

Reuben Hersh
He rests his faith on rigorous proof; he believes that the difference between a correct proof and an incorrect one is an unmistakable and decisive difference. He can think of no condemnation more damning than to say of a student, "He doesn't even know what a proof is."

Reuben Hersh
Time, that mysterious something, that flow, that relation, that mediator, that arena for event, envelops us and confounds us all.

Reuben Hersh
The sciences of quantity and of space in their simpler forms are known as arithmetic and geometry.

Reuben Hersh
We still cannot say what time is; we cannot agree whether there is one time or many times, cannot even agree whether time is an essential ingredient of the universe or whether it is the grand illusion of the human intellect.

Reuben Hersh
Formalized mathematics, to which most philosophizing has been devoted in recent years, is in fact hardly to be found anywhere on earth or in heaven outside the texts and journals of symbolic logic.

Reuben Hersh
Some order begins to emerge from this chaos when the primes are considered not in their individuality but in the aggregate; one considers the social statistics of the primes and not the eccentricities of the individuals.

Reuben Hersh
Proof serves many purposes simultaneously.... Proof is respectability. Proof is the seal of authority. Proof, in its best instance, increases understanding by revealing the heart of the matter. Proof suggests new mathematics... Proof is mathematical power, the electric voltage of the subject which vitalizes the static assertions of the theorems.

Reuben Hersh
Proof is for cosmetic purposes and also to reduce somewhat the edge of insecurity on which one always lives.

Reuben Hersh
In the realm of ideas, of mental objects, those ideas whose properties are reproducible are called mathematical objects, and the study of mental objects with reproducible properties is called mathematics.

Reuben Hersh
If the number of theorems is larger than one can possibly survey, who can be trusted to judge what is "important?" One cannot have survival of the fittest if there is no interaction.

Reuben Hersh
It seems certain that there is a limit to the amount of living mathematics that humanity can sustain at any time. As new mathematical specialties arise, old ones will have to be neglected.

Reuben Hersh