Impact
E.T.Bell in his book Men of Mathematics wrote about Lobachevsky's influence on the following development of mathematics:
The boldness of his challenge and its successful outcome have inspired mathematicians and scientists in general to challenge other 'axioms' or accepted 'truths', for example the 'law' of causality which, for centuries, have seemed as necessary to straight thinking as Euclid's postulate appeared till Lobatchewsky discarded it. The full impact of the Lobatchewskian method of challenging axioms has probably yet to be felt. It is no exaggeration to call Lobatchewsky the Copernicus of Geometry, for geometry is only a part of the vaster domain which he renovated; it might even be just to designate him as a Copernicus of all thought.
Read more about this topic: Nikolai Lobachevsky
Famous quotes containing the word impact:
“Conquest is the missionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.”
—Thomas S. Kuhn (b. 1922)
“If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn’t be here. It’d still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)