Role in Scientific and Mathematical Discovery
Important scientific discoveries have been made through imaginative cognition, such as Kekulé’s famous discovery of the carbon ring structure of benzene through a dream of a snake eating its tail. Hadamard suggested that imagination (and beauty) play central roles in mathematical creativity.
Read more about this topic: Active Imagination
Famous quotes containing the words role in, role, scientific, mathematical and/or discovery:
“Certainly parents play a crucial role in the lives of individuals who are intellectually gifted or creatively talented. But this role is not one of active instruction, of teaching children skills,... rather, it is support and encouragement parents give children and the intellectual climate that they create in the home which seem to be the critical factors.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.”
—Jan Patocka (1907–1977)
“I hate Science. It denies a man’s responsibility for his own deeds, abolishes the brotherhood that springs from God’s fatherhood. It is a hectoring, dictating expertise, which makes the least lovable of the Church Fathers seem liberal by contrast. It is far easier for a Hitler or a Stalin to find a mock- scientific excuse for persecution than it was for Dominic to find a mock-Christian one.”
—Basil Bunting (1900–1985)
“The circumstances of human society are too complicated to be submitted to the rigour of mathematical calculation.”
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)