Search All of the Math Forum:
Views expressed in these public forums are not endorsed by
Drexel University or The Math Forum.
|
|
|
|
Re: [HM] Russell quote
Posted:
Dec 16, 2006 11:54 AM
|
|
Mysticism and Logic. In the essay "The Study of Mathematics"
Steve Butcher
Department of Mathematics
University of Central Arkansas
Conway, AR 72035
(501)450-5658
email: SteveB@uca.edu
>>> "reuben hersh" <rhersh@gmail.com> 11/28/06 8:59 AM >>>
The following quote is attributed to Bertrand Russell in Steve Krantz's
"Mathematical Apocrypha Redux," MAA 2006, p. 100
"The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more
than
man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found
in
mathematics as surely as in poetry. What is best in mathematics
deserves
not merely to be learned as a task, but to be assimilated as a part of
daily
thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed
encouragement. Real life, is, to most men, a long second-best, a
perpetual
compromise between the real and the possible, but the world of pure
reason
knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the
creative
activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after
the
perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions,
remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have
gradually
created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its
natural
home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from
the
dreary exile of the natural world."
Can anyone tell me where in Russells's writings this appeared?
Reuben Hersh
rhersh@gmail.com
|
|
|
|
