Rigour (Rigor) Quotes (2)

It [analysis] lacks at this point such plan and unity that it is really amazing that it can be studied by so many people. The worst is that it has not at all been treated with rigor. There are only a few propositions in higher analysis that have been demonstrated with complete rigor. Everywhere one finds the unfortunate manner of reasoning from the particular to the general, and it is very unusual that with such a method one finds, in spite of everything, only a few of what many be called paradoxes. It is really very interesting to seek the reason.
In my opinion that arises from the fact that the functions with which analysis has until now been occupied can, for the most part, be expressed by means of powers. As soon as others appear, something that, it is true, does not often happen, this no longer works and from false conclusions there flow a mass of incorrect propositions.
From a letter to his professor Hansteen in Christiania, Oslo in Correspondence (1902), 23 . In Umberto Bottazzini and Warren Van Egmond, The Higher Calculus (1986), 87-88.
See also:  |  Analysis (37)  |  Conclusion (24)  |  False (13)  |  Function (9)  |  Paradox (13)  |  Plan (8)  |  Proposition (8)  |  Reason (69)  |  Reasoning (27)

Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost. Rigour should be a signal to the historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone elsewhere.
'Mathematics and History', Mathematical Intelligencer, 4, No. 4, 10.
See also:  |  Explorer (3)  |  Historian (6)  |  Journey (4)  |  Lost (6)  |  Map (6)  |  Mathematics (221)  |  Wilderness (3)

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