Mathematics, Poetry and Beauty

Introduction: Magic
A mathematician who is not also something of a poet will never be a complete mathematician.
Karl Weierstrass, German mathematician, 1815–1897

Voltaire, for example, said that “there was more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer

In mathematics and in poetry the effect is beauty.

what is on the surface is only one aspect of reality. The inner forces are of greater importance.

The poem is telling us something deep without our being fully aware of its meaning. A poem is a pickpocket who instead of stealing, puts something in our pocket without us noticing.

And what poetry does to human emotions and cravings, mathematics does to order in the material world. It tries to find the internal logic of things

What does geometry have in common with music, or arithmetic with poetry? One answer is that both mathematics and poetry search for hidden patterns

there was more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.”

The moving power of mathematical invention
is not reasoning but imagination

“there was more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.”