Definitions of mathematics

Early definitions[edit]
Aristotle defined mathematics as:
The science of quantity.
In Aristotle's classification of the sciences, discrete quantities were studied by arithmetic, continuous
quantities by geometry.[3]
Auguste Comte's definition tried to explain the role of mathematics in coordinating phenomena in all
other fields:[4]
The science of indirect measurement.[5] Auguste Comte 1851
The "indirectness" in Comte's definition refers to determining quantities that cannot be measured
directly, such as the distance to planets or the size of atoms, by means of their relations to quantities
that can be measured directly.[6]

Greater abstraction and competing philosophical schools [edit]

The preceding kinds of definitions, which had prevailed since Aristotle's time, [3] were abandoned in
the 19th century as new branches of mathematics were developed, which bore no obvious relation
to measurement or the physical world, such as group theory, projective geometry,[5] and nonEuclidean geometry.[7] As mathematicians pursued greater rigor and more-abstractfoundations, some
proposed definitions purely in terms of logic:
Mathematics is the science that draws necessary conclusions.[8] Benjamin Peirce 1870
All Mathematics is Symbolic Logic.[7] Bertrand Russell 1903
Peirce did not think that mathematics is the same as logic, since he thought mathematics makes
only hypothetical assertions, not categorical ones.[9] Russell's definition, on the other hand,
expresses the logicist philosophy of mathematics[10] without reservation. Competing philosophies of
mathematics put forth different definitions.
Opposing the completely deductive character of logicism, intuitionism emphasizes the construction
of ideas in the mind. Here is an inituitionist definition:[10]

Mathematics is mental activity which consists in carrying out, one after the other, those mental
constructions which are inductive and effective.
meaning that by combining fundamental ideas, one reaches a definite result.
Formalism denies both physical and mental meaning to mathematics, making the symbols and rules
themselves the object of study.[10] A formalist definition:
Mathematics is the manipulation of the meaningless symbols of a first-order language according to
explicit, syntactical rules.
Still other approaches emphasize pattern, order, or structure. For example:
Mathematics is the classification and study of all possible patterns.

Walter Warwick Sawyer, 1955

Yet another approach makes abstraction the defining criterion:

Mathematics is a broad-ranging field of study in which the properties and interactions of idealized
objects are examined. Wolfram MathWorld

General, nonspecialist perspectives[edit]

Most contemporary reference works define mathematics mainly by summarizing its main topics and
methods and referencing its history:
The abstract science which investigates deductively the conclusions implicit in the elementary
conceptions of spatial and numerical relations, and which includes as its main divisions geometry,
arithmetic, and algebra. Oxford English Dictionary, 1933
I believe maths is concerned with the development of language for expression, validation,
falsification, deduction, calculation. This also involves the development of concepts for expression
and description of structure and patterns. Ronald Brown
The study of the measurement, properties, and relationships of quantities and sets, using numbers
and symbols. American Heritage Dictionary, 2000
The science of structure, order, and relation that has evolved from elemental practices of counting,
measuring, and describing the shapes of objects.[11] Encyclopaedia Britannica

Playful, metaphorical, and poetic definitions[edit]

Bertrand Russell wrote this famous tongue-in-cheek definition, describing the way all terms in
mathematics are ultimately defined by reference to undefined terms:
The subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is
true.[12] Bertrand Russell 1901
Many other attempts to characterize mathematics have led to humor or poetic prose:
"Mathematics is about making up rules and seeing what happens."[13] Vi Hart
A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there. [14] Charles Darwin
A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent
than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas. G. H. Hardy, 1940
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.[8] Henri Poincar
Mathematics is the science of skilful operations with concepts and rules invented just for this
purpose. [this purpose being the skilful operation ....] [15] Eugene Wigner
Mathematics is not a book confined within a cover and bound between brazen clasps, whose
contents it needs only patience to ransack; it is not a mine, whose treasures may take long to reduce
into possession, but which fill only a limited number of veins and lodes; it is not a soil, whose fertility
can be exhausted by the yield of successive harvests; it is not a continent or an ocean, whose area
can be mapped out and its contour defined: it is limitless as that space which it finds too narrow for
its aspirations; its possibilities are as infinite as the worlds which are forever crowding in and
multiplying upon the astronomer's gaze; it is as incapable of being restricted within assigned
boundaries or being reduced to definitions of permanent validity, as the consciousness of life, which
seems to slumber in each monad, in every atom of matter, in each leaf and bud cell, and is forever
ready to burst forth into new forms of vegetable and animal existence. [16] James Joseph Sylvester
What is mathematics? What is it for? What are mathematicians doing nowadays? Wasn't it all
finished long ago? How many new numbers can you invent anyway? Is today's mathematics just a
matter of huge calculations, with the mathematician as a kind of zookeeper, making sure the
precious computers are fed and watered? If it's not, what is it other than the incomprehensible
outpourings of superpowered brainboxes with their heads in the clouds and their feet dangling from
the lofty balconies of their ivory towers? Mathematics is all of these, and none. Mostly, it's just
different. It's not what you expect it to be, you turn your back for a moment and it's changed. It's

certainly not just a fixed body of knowledge, its growth is not confined to inventing new numbers, and
its hidden tendrils pervade every aspect of modern life. [16] Ian Stewart