# Science and Method - Author: [Henri Poincaré](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare.md) - Quotes: 10 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method ## Quotes > Logic sometimes breeds monsters. For half a century there has been springing up a host of weird functions, which seem to strive to have as little resemblance as possible to honest functions that are of some use. No more continuity, or else continuity but no derivatives, etc. More than this, from the point of view of logic, it is these strange functions that are the most general; those that are met without being looked for no longer appear as more than a particular case, and they have only quite a little corner left them. Formerly, when a new function was invented, it was in view of some practical end. Today they are invented on purpose to show our ancestors' reasoning at fault, and we shall never get anything more than that out of them. p. 139 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method/logic-sometimes-breeds.md) > It is because simplicity and vastness are both beautiful that we seek by preference simple facts and vast facts; that we take delight, now in following the giant courses of the stars, now in scrutinizing the microscope that prodigious smallness which is also a vastness, and now in seeking in geological ages the traces of a past that attracts us because of its remoteness. p. 23 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method/it-is-because.md) > Every definition implies an axiom, since it asserts the existence of the object defined. The definition then will not be justified, from the purely logical point of view, until we have proved that it involves no contradiction either in its terms or with the truths previously admitted. p. 131 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method/every-definition-implies.md) > I think I have already said somewhere that mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things. p. 31 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method/i-think-i-have.md) > It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better. p. 129 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method/it-is-by-logic.md) > Sociology is the science which has the most methods and the least results. p. 19 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method/sociology-is-the.md) > The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp. p. 22 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method/the-scientist-does.md) > The greatest chance is the birth of a great man. It is only by chance that two reproductive cells, of different sexes, met, each containing precisely those mysterious elements whose mutual reaction was to produce genius. We will agree that these elements must be rare and that their meeting is even rarer. That it would have taken little to deviate the spermatozoon that carried them from its course; it would have been enough to deviate it by a tenth of a millimeter and Napoleon would not have been born and the destiny of a continent would have been changed. No other example can better explain the true nature of chance. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method/the-greatest-chance.md) > Logic teaches us that on such and such a road we are sure of not meeting an obstacle; it does not tell us which is the road that leads to the desired end. For this, it is necessary to see the end from afar, and the faculty which teaches us to see is intuition. Without it, the geometrician would be like a writer well up in grammar but destitute of ideas. p. 130 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method/logic-teaches-us-that.md) > The principal aim of mathematical education is to develop certain faculties of the mind, and among these intuition is not the least precious. It is through it that the mathematical world remains in touch with the real world, and even if pure mathematics could do without it, we should still have to have recourse to it to fill up the gulf that separates the symbol from reality. p. 128 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-poincare/science-and-method/the-principal-aim.md)