Quotation
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“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty.”
Bertrand Russell · Analytic philosophy · Modern · 1907
What does it mean?
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth but supreme beauty, a beauty cold and austere, like sculpture, without appeal to the weaker parts of our nature. A rival reading hears a Romantic gush that sits badly with his logic, or a claim that mathematics is beautiful because it is useful. He is saying the opposite of useful. The beauty is a reason the subject matters even when it does not pay. Another reading thinks 'supreme' is a personal taste inflated into a rank.
Did Bertrand Russell really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Russell's English. The essay was published in 1907 and collected in Mysticism and Logic (1918). He contrasts this beauty, cold and austere, with the warmer beauties people more easily praise. A sentence sometimes pinned on him about the place of love is a different claim and is not used here.
Where it comes from
Mysticism and Logic, 'The Study of Mathematics'
Approximate date: 1907.
How to use it
A pupil in a comprehensive in Liverpool is told mathematics is worth doing because of the salary it may unlock. Russell's sentence is the other reason, and it will not persuade everyone, which he would not mind. The teaching question is whether a pupil is allowed to meet the cold beauty or only the salary. The salary may be a good reason. It is not the one this sentence is.
A mindset reading
Rightly viewed is doing work. He thinks the usual view, mathematics as a grind or as a tool, misses the thing. You can find the austere beauty repellent. That is a disagreement with the essay, not a discovery that he never praised anything.
Understand the philosophy
'The Study of Mathematics', 1907, in Mysticism and Logic. It belongs with his public defence of useless knowledge, cousin to the last chapter of The Problems of Philosophy. It is not the 1933 essay on cocksure stupidity. Different decades, different jobs.
- knowledge
- meaning
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth but supreme beauty, a beauty cold and austere, like sculpture, without appeal to the weaker parts of our nature. A rival reading hears a Romantic gush that sits badly with his logic, or a claim that mathematics is beautiful because it is useful. He is saying the opposite of useful. The beauty is a reason the subject matters even when it does not pay. Another reading thinks 'supreme' is a personal taste inflated into a rank.
Did Bertrand Russell really say this?
Well attested. Russell's English. The essay was published in 1907 and collected in Mysticism and Logic (1918). He contrasts this beauty, cold and austere, with the warmer beauties people more easily praise. A sentence sometimes pinned on him about the place of love is a different claim and is not used here.
Which work is it in?
Mysticism and Logic, 'The Study of Mathematics' Approximate date: 1907.