Uses of Mathesis; Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 32, p. 521.
[2158]. One of the most remarkable of Babbage’s illustrations of miracles has never had the consideration in the popular mind which it deserves; the illustration drawn from the existence of isolated points fulfilling the equation of a curve.... There are definitions of curves which describe not only the positions of every point in a certain curve, but also of one or more perfectly isolated points; and if we should attempt to get by induction the definition, from the observation of the points on the curve, we might fail altogether to include these isolated points; which, nevertheless, although standing alone, as miracles to the observer of the course of the points in the curve, are nevertheless rigorously included in the law of the curve.—Hill, Thomas.
Uses of Mathesis; Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 32, p. 516.
[2159]. Pure mathematics is the magician’s real wand.—Novalis.
Schriften, Zweiter Teil (Berlin, 1901), p. 223.
[2160]. Miracles, considered as antinatural facts, are amathematical, but there are no miracles in this sense, and those so called may be comprehended by means of mathematics, for to mathematics nothing is miraculous.—Novalis.
Schriften, Zweiter Teil (Berlin, 1911), p. 222.