Carl B Boyer - Collected Quotes

"As the sensations of motion and discreteness led to the abstract notions of the calculus, so may sensory experience continue thus to suggest problem for the mathematician, and so may she in turn be free to reduce these to the basic formal logical relationships involved. Thus only may be fully appreciated the twofold aspect of mathematics: as the language of a descriptive interpretation of the relationships discovered in natural phenomena, and as a syllogistic elaboration of arbitrary premise." (Carl B Boyer, "The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development", 1959)

"Mathematics is an aspect of culture as well as a collection of algorithms." (Carl B Boyer, "The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development", 1959)

"Materialistic and idealistic philosophies have both failed to appreciate the nature of mathematics, as accepted at the present time. Mathematics is neither a description of nature nor an explanation of its operation; it is not concerned with physical motion or with the metaphysical generation of quantities. It is merely the symbolic logic of possible relations, and as such is concerned with neither approximate nor absolute truth, but only with hypothetical truth." (Carl B Boyer, "The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development", 1959)

"Mathematics is neither a description of nature nor an explanation of its operation; it is not concerned with physical motion or with the metaphysical generation of quantities. It is merely the symbolic logic of possible relations, and as such is concerned with neither approximate nor absolute truth, but only with hypothetical truth. That is, mathematics determines what conclusions will follow logically from given premises. The conjunction of mathematics and philosophy, or of mathematics and science is frequently of great service in suggesting new problems and points of view." (Carl B Boyer, "The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development", 1959)

"[...] mathematics is not free to develop as it will, but is bound by certain restrictions: by conceptions derived either a posteriori from natural science, or assumed to be imposed a priori by an absolutistic philosophy." (Carl B Boyer, "The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development", 1959)

"Mathematics has, of course, given the solution of the difficulties in terms of the abstract concept of converging infinite series. In a certain metaphysical sense this notion of convergence does not answer Zeno’s argument, in that it does not tell how one is to picture an infinite number of magnitudes as together making up only a finite magnitude; that is, it does not give an intuitively clear and satisfying picture, in terms of sense experience, of the relation subsisting between the infinite series and the limit of this series." (Carl B Boyer, "The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development", 1959)

"The mathematical theory of continuity is based, not on intuition, but on the logically developed theories of number and sets of points." (Carl B Boyer, "The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development", 1959)

"One of the lessons that the history of mathematics clearly teaches us is that the search for solutions to unsolved problems, whether solvable or unsolvable, invariably leads to important discoveries along the way." (Carl B Boyer & Uta C Merzbach, "A History of Mathematics", 1976)