If All Sentient Beings In The Universe

A Surprising Proportion Of Mathematicians Are Accomplished Musicians. Is It Because Music And Mathematics Share Patterns That Are Beautiful?

Biographical History, As Taught In Our Public Schools, Is Still Largely A History Of Boneheads; Ridiculous Kings And Queens, Paranoid Political Leaders, Compulsive Voyagers, Ignorant General The Flotsam And Jetsam Of Historical Currents. The Men Who Radically Altered History, The Great Scientists And Mathematicians, Are Seldom Mentioned, If At All.

One Would Be Hard Put To Find A Set Of Whole Numbers With A More Fascinating History And More Elegant Properties Surrounded By Greater Depths Of Mystery--and More Totally Useless--than The Perfect Numbers.

The Last Level Of Metaphor In The Alice Books Is This: That Life, Viewed Rationally And Without Illusion, Appears To Be A Nonsense Tale Told By An Idiot Mathematician. At The Heart Of Things Science Finds Only A Mad, Never-ending Quadrille Of Mock Turtle Waves And Gryphon Particles. For A Moment The Waves And Particles Dance In Grotesque, Inconceivably Complex Patterns Capable Of Reflecting On Their Own Absurdity.

If All Sentient Beings In The Universe Disappeared, There Would Remain A Sense In Which Mathematical Objects And Theorems Would Continue To Exist Even Though There Would Be No One Around To Write Or Talk About Them. Huge Prime Numbers Would Continue To Be Prime, Even If No One Had Proved Them Prime.