Auguste Comte Quotes
In mathematics we find the primitive source of rationality; and to mathematics must the biologists resort for means to carry out their researches.
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.
Auguste Comte, 1798-1857, French Mathematician & Philosopher, The Positive Philosophy, 1853
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
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.
Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte was a French philosopher and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. Comte's ideas were also fundamental to the development of sociology; indeed, he invented the term and treated that discipline as the crowning achievement of the sciences.
