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Fontenelle, Bernard de. 1657 - 1757. French mathematician and
philosopher.
"The geometrical method is not so rigidly confined to
geometry itself
that it cannot be applied to other branches of knowledge as well. A work of morality, politics, criticism
will be more elegant, other things
being equal, if it is shaped by the
hand of geometry."
Preface sur l'Utilité des Mathématiques et
de la Physique, 1729.
"Mathematicians are like lovers ... Grant a mathematician the least
principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must grant
him also, and from this consequence another."
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