Rene Thom Quotes

#1. Algebra is rich in structure but weak in meaning.

Rene Thom

#2. Quantum mechanics, with its leap into statistics, has been a mere palliative for our ignorance

Rene Thom

#3. The importance of the "New Mathematics" lies mainly in the fact that it has taught us the difference between the disc and the circle.

Rene Thom

#4. If one must choose between rigour and meaning, I shall unhesitatingly choose the latter.

Rene Thom

#5. The world of ideas is not revealed to us in one stroke; we must both permanently and unceasingly recreate it in our consciousness.

Rene Thom

#6. At a time when so many scholars in the world are calculating, is it not desirable that some, who can, dream ?

Rene Thom

#7. I believe that proving is not a natural activity for mathematicians.

Rene Thom

#8. All models divide naturally ... into two a priori parts: one is kinematics, whose aim is to parameterize the forms of the states of the process under consideration, and the other is dynamics, describing the evolution in time of these forms.

Rene Thom

#9. The purely formal language of geometry describes adequately the reality of space. We might say, in this sense, that geometry is successful magic. I should like to state a converse: is not all magic, to the extent that it is successful, geometry?

Rene Thom

#10. Topology is precisely the mathematical discipline that allows the passage from local to global ...

Rene Thom