Quote of the Day

It might perhaps be thought that a scheme of mathematics on a frankly approximative basis would be sufficient for all the practical purposes of application in physics, engineering science, and astronomy…[but] the mathematician working on these lines would be cut off from the chief sources of inspiration—the ideals of exactitude and logical rigor—as well as from one of his most indispensable guides to discovery, symmetry, and permanence of mathematical form.

—E.W. Hobson, in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science