36 Quotes by David Berlinski

My own view, repeated in virtually all of my essays, is that the sense of skepticism engendered by the sciences would be far more appropriately directed toward the sciences than toward anything else.

Aristotelian logic is massive and marmoreal, but every monument accumulates graffiti.

For all the great dreams profitlessly invested in the digital computer, it is nonetheless true that not since the framers of the American Constitution took seriously the idea that all men are created equal has an idea so transformed the material conditions of life, the expectations of the race.

I do not know whether any of this is true. I am certain that the scientific community does not know that it is false.

More than sixty years ago, mathematical logicians, by defining precisely the concept of an algorithm, gave content to the ancient human idea of an effective calculation. Their definitions led to the creation of the digital computer, an interesting example of thought bending matter to its ends.

Although every novel is derived directly from another novel, there is really only one novel, the Quixote.

Arithmetic is where the content lies, and not logic; but logic prompts certainty, and not arithmetic.

For the most part, it is true, ordinary men and women regard mathematics with energetic distaste, counting its concepts as rhapsodic as cauliflower. This is a mistake-there is no other word. Where else can the restless human mind find means to tie the infinite in a finite bow?

However good an argument in philosophy may happen to be, it is generally not good enough.