Concept

Mathematical beauty

Overview

notion that some mathematicians may derive aesthetic pleasure from mathematics

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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This is a true esthetic feeling that all real mathematicians know, and surely it belongs to emotional sensibility. Now, what are the mathematic entities to which we attribute this character of beauty and elegance, and which are capable of developing in us a sort of esthetic emotion? They are those whose elements are harmoniously disposed so that the mind without effort can embrace their totality while realizing the…
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
Names Mathematical beauty.
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Whenever proofs depend upon some only of the marks by which we define the object to be studied, these marks should be isolated and investigated on their own account. For it is a defect, in an argument, to employ more premisses than the conclusion demands: what mathematicians call elegance results from employing only the essential principles in virtue of which the thesis is true. It is a merit in Euclid that he…
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
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Not so very far removed from the devotion to obscure causes is absorption in a hobby. One of the most eminent of living mathematicians divides his time equally between mathematics and stamp-collecting. I imagine that the latter affords consolation at the moments when he can make no progress with the former.
Bertrand Russell, The conquest of happiness
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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Aesthetics.

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