4 Quotes by Ernest Nagel

It is the desire for explanations that are at once systematic and controllable by factual evidence that generates science; and it is the organization and classification of knowledge on the basis of explanatory principles that is the distinctive goal of the sciences.

Like Molière’s M. Jourdain, who spoke prose all his life without knowing it, mathematicians have been reasoning for at least two millennia without being aware of all the principles underlying what they were doing. The real nature of the tools of their craft has become evident only within recent times A renaissance of logical studies in modern times begins with the publication in 1847 of George Boole’s 'The Mathematical Analysis of Logic'.

Human destiny is an episode between two oblivions.

Contrary to all prior belief, the vast continent of arithmetical truth cannot be brought into systematic order by laying down for once and for all a fixed set of axioms and rules of inference from which every true arithmetical statement can be formally derived.