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J. W. A. Young
(1865 - 1945)
mathematician and author who wrote a number of elementary and secondary school textbooks on arithmetic and basic mathematics. He was an associate professor of the pedagogy of mathematics at the University of Chicago.
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Science Quotes by J. W. A. Young (6 quotes)
It was a felicitous expression of Goethe’s to call a noble cathedral “frozen music,” but it might even better be called “petrified mathematics.”
— J. W. A. Young
In The Teaching of Mathematics in the Elementary and the Secondary School (1906), 44.
Little can be understood of even the simplest phenomena of nature without some knowledge of mathematics, and the attempt to penetrate deeper into the mysteries of nature compels simultaneous development of the mathematical processes.
— J. W. A. Young
In Teaching of Mathematics in the Elementary and the Secondary School (1906), 16.
Mathematics has beauties of its own—a symmetry and proportion in its results, a lack of superfluity, an exact adaptation of means to ends, which is exceedingly remarkable and to be found only in the works of the greatest beauty. … When this subject is properly and concretely presented, the mental emotion should be that of enjoyment of beauty, not that of repulsion from the ugly and the unpleasant.
— J. W. A. Young
In The Teaching of Mathematics in the Elementary and the Secondary School (1906), 44-45.
Mathematics is a type of thought which seems ingrained in the human mind, which manifests itself to some extent with even the primitive races, and which is developed to a high degree with the growth of civilization. … A type of thought, a body of results, so essentially characteristic of the human mind, so little influenced by environment, so uniformly present in every civilization, is one of which no well-informed mind today can be ignorant.
— J. W. A. Young
In Teaching of Mathematics in the Elementary and the Secondary School (1906), 14.
The training which mathematics gives in working with symbols is an excellent preparation for other sciences; … the world’s work requires constant mastery of symbols.
— J. W. A. Young
In Teaching of Mathematics in the Elementary and the Secondary School (1906), 42.
When ever we turn in these days of iron, steam and electricity we find that Mathematics has been the pioneer. Were its back bone removed, our material civilization would inevitably collapse. Modern thought and belief would have been altogether different, had Mathematics not made the various sciences exact.
— J. W. A. Young
The Teaching of Mathematics in the Elementary and the Secondary School (1907), 13.
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) -- 
