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Arthur Lefevre
(4 Jun 1863 - 4 Mar 1928)
American mathematician, administrator and educationalist who taught mathematics in Texas for a few years in his early career, but spent most of his life as a local superintendent of schools, then state superintendent of public instruction, and became involved in research on the organization and enlargement of Texas institutions of higher learning (1911-1913). He gave speeches on the problems of education in Texas, published in various journals, and authored The Organization and Administration of a State’s Institutions of Higher Education (1914).
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Science Quotes by Arthur Lefevre (2 quotes)
Formal thought, consciously recognized as such, is the means of all exact knowledge; and a correct understanding of the main formal sciences, Logic and Mathematics, is the proper and only safe foundation for a scientific education.
— Arthur Lefevre
In Number and its Algebra (1896), 134.
Mathematics has often been characterized as the most conservative of all sciences. This is true in the sense of the immediate dependence of new upon old results. All the marvellous new advancements presuppose the old as indispensable steps in the ladder. … Inaccessibility of special fields of mathematics, except by the regular way of logically antecedent acquirements, renders the study discouraging or hateful to weak or indolent minds.
— Arthur Lefevre
In Number and its Algebra (1896), 136.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
