Immanuel Kant Quotes
I assert that, in any particular natural science, one encounters genuine scientific substance only to the extent that mathematics is present.
Kant, Immanuel. Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Translated by James W. Ellington, Bobbs-Merrill, 1970, p. 6.
For many scientists, this is the goal of each area of inquiry. For others, the science is crude and really not understood unless the mathematical model exists and can be verified experimentally. For Thompson, this was the difference between understanding and not.
This is an amazing quotation. It was not until the last 50 years that biologists have come to realize that mathematics is essential to their understanding of the science, just like chemistry and physics. For years biology was a science that did not require mathematics as a prerequisite for study. With the exception of a few holdouts, biology had come of age—an age predicted by Comte. This has placed more pressure on the high schools which used to counsel students that if they did not like mathematics or take it, they could go into biology. No longer is that reality.
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy.
