Joseph Fourier famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Mathematics compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them.
-- Joseph Fourier

#Math #Secret #Analogies
The profound study of nature is the most fertile source of mathematical discovery.
-- Joseph Fourier

#Math #Discovery #Profound
There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities...more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things [than mathematics]. [It interprets] all phenomena by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes
-- Joseph Fourier

#Simple #Errors #Order
Mathematical analysis is as extensive as nature itself; it defines all perceptible relations, measures times, spaces, forces, temperatures:;; this difficult science is formed slowly, but it preserves every principle which it has once acquired; it grows and strengthens itself incessantly in the midst of the many variations and errors of the human mind. It's chief attribute is clearness; it has no marks to express confused notations. It brings together phenomena the most diverse, and discovers the hidden analogies which unite them.
-- Joseph Fourier

#Confused #Errors #Space
The effects of heat are subject to constant laws which cannot be discovered without the aid of mathematical analysis. The object of the theory is to demonstrate these laws; it reduces all physical researches on the propagation of heat, to problems of the integral calculus, whose elements are given by experiment. No subject has more extensive relations with the progress of industry and the natural sciences; for the action of heat is always present, it influences the processes of the arts, and occurs in all the phenomena of the universe.
-- Joseph Fourier

#Art #Law #Progress

Some of the greatest advances in mathematics have been due to the invention of symbols, which it afterwards became necessary to explain; from the minus sign proceeded the whole theory of negative quantities.
The question you raise, 'How can such a formulation lead to computations?' doesn't bother me in the least! Throughout my whole life as a mathematician, the possibility of making explicit, elegant computations has always come out by itself, as a byproduct of a thorough conceptual understanding of what was going on. Thus I never bothered about whether what would come out would be suitable for this or that, but just tried to understand - and it always turned out that understanding was all that mattered.
The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.
Every man has his secret desire, I suppose, and mine is someday to own a farm.
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks... With enough of us, around the world, weâ€™ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge â€” weâ€™ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
Don't Let Him Know is a rich, evocative and brilliantly told tale of family, of loyalties, and of love that must stay secret. Sandip Roy has broken new ground in this tale of the modern Indian family. A lovely read
One of my secrets is to joke all the time.
And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.
I had been struck by the analogy between neurosis and romanticism. Romanticism was truly a parallel to neurosis. It demanded of reality an illusory world, love, an absolute which it could never obtain, and thus destroyed itself by the dream.
Would you go to see a brilliant actor who's been framed for something that he didn't do, and put him on a stage and say he's going to doÂ HamletÂ for you, and why don't you enjoy it? That's a hell of an analogy, but it's about the same thing.

Joseph Fourier famous quotes

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