Frank Ashe

“There is a crisis in contemporary mathematics, and anybody who has not noticed it is being willfully blind. The crisis is due to our neglect of philosophical issues. The courses in the foundations of mathematics as taught in our universities emphasize the mathematical analysis of formal systems, at the expense of philosophical substance. Thus it is the mathematical profession that tends to equate philosophy with the study of formal systems, which require knowledge of technical theorems for comprehension. They do not want to learn yet another branch of mathematics and therefore leave the philosophy to the experts. As a consequence, we prove these theorems and we do not know what they mean. The job of proving theorems is not impeded by inconvenient inquires into their meaning or purpose. In order to resolve one aspect of this crisis, emphasis will have to be transferred from the mechanics of the assembly line which keeps grinding out the theorems, to an examination of what is being proved.”
― Errett Bishop

“The happiness achieved in isolation from the world and enjoyed within the confines of one’s own private existence can never be anything but the famous “absence of pain,” a definition on which all variations of consistent sensualism must agree.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

“Most of my life has been spent not understanding, and I can assure you, it was not easy.”
― Rilke

“I had an idea of symmetry Bordering on theology”
― Ariana Reines, A Sand Book