Willem de Sitter - Mathematical Quotes

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It is possible to relegate the epoch of the starting of the expansion to minus infinity, e. g. by using instead of the ordinary time the logarithm of the time elapsed since the beginning. But this is only a mathematical trick. We call zero minus infinity, but that only means that we allow the universe an infinite time to get well started on its course of expansion, but it does not make the time during which anything really happens any longer.

Willem de Sitter
Purely mathematical symbols have no meaning by themselves; it is the privilege of pure mathematicians, to quote Bertrand Russell, not to know what they are talking about.... It is the physicist, and not the mathematician, who must know what he is talking about.

Willem de Sitter
The field equations, in their most general form, contain a term multiplied by a constant, which is denoted by the Greek letter λ... sometimes called the "cosmical constant." This is a name without any meaning... We have, in fact, not the slightest inkling of what its real significance is. It is put in the equations in order to give them the greatest possible degree of mathematical generality, but, so far as its mathematical function is concerned, it is entirely undetermined: it may be positive or negative, it might also be zero.

Willem de Sitter
In electromagnetism... the law of the inverse square had been supreme, but, as a consequence of the work of Faraday and Maxwell, it was superseded by the field. And the same change took place in the theory of gravitation. By and by the material particles, electrically charged bodies, and magnets which are the things that we actually observe come to be looked upon only as "singularities" in the field. So far this transformation from the force to the potential, from the action at a distance to the field, is only a purely mathematical operation.

Willem de Sitter
[Einstein's cosmological constant] is a name without any meaning.... We have, in fact, not the slightest inkling of what it's real significance is. It is put in the equations in order to give the greatest possible degree of mathematical generality.

Willem de Sitter