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And I'll go even further and say that mathematics, this art of abstract pattern-making _ even more than storytelling, painting, or music - is our most quintessentially human art form. This is what our brains do, whether we like it or not. We are biochemical pattern-recognition machines and mathematics is nothing less than the distilled essence of who we are.
Paul Lockhart A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
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And I'll go even further and say that mathematics, this art of abstract pattern-making _ even more than storytelling, painting, or music - is our most quintessentially human art form. This is what our brains do, whether we like it or not. We are biochemical pattern-recognition machines and mathematics is nothing less than the distilled essence of who we are.
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Paul Lockhart

A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form

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[Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing__ne great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me.