A Room With No Exit

Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out.

-Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1471-1530)

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Levels of Confusions

We do not know many things. We seem to learn few things as time passes but there is this nagging feeling of incomprehensibility. Here is a quote from Oksendal's Stochastic Differential Equations:

We have not succeeded in answering all our problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things.

- Posted outside the mathematics reading room, Tromso University

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Going Through the Past

What is the role of evolution of ideas in communicating those ideas? Here is a quote for us to think about such issues.

The task of the educator is to make the child's spirit pass again where its forefathers have gone, moving rapidly through certain stages but suppressing none of them. In this regard, the history of science must be our guide.

- Poincare

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Truth - Relative and Absolute

... But I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him. I am prepared to sacrifice the things dearest to me in pursuit of this quest. Even if the sacrifice demanded be my very life, I hope I may be prepared to give it. But as long as I have not realized this Absolute Truth, so long must I hold by the relative truth as I have conceived it. That relative truth must, meanwhile, be my beacon, my shield and buckler...

- Mahatma Gandhi (from this wonderful site)

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Realizing the Belief ...

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

~John Louis von Neumann