Mathematics is a theoretic science of things apprehensible by perception and sensation for communication to others. And before this a certain person indulging in a joke, while hitting his mark, said that mathematics is that science to which Homer’s description of Discord may be applied:
“Small at her birth, but rising every hour,
While scarce the skies her mighty head can bound,
She stalks on earth and shakes the world ’round.”
For it begins with a point and a line, and forthwith it takes heaven itself and all things within its compass.
“Small at her birth, but rising every hour,
While scarce the skies her mighty head can bound,
She stalks on earth and shakes the world ’round.”
For it begins with a point and a line, and forthwith it takes heaven itself and all things within its compass.
Saint Anatolius of Laodicea
