[108]. Higher Mathematics is the art of reasoning about numerical relations between natural phenomena; and the several sections of Higher Mathematics are different modes of viewing these relations.—Mellor, J. W.
Higher Mathematics for Students of Chemistry and Physics (New York, 1902), Prologue
[109]. Number, place, and combination ... the three intersecting but distinct spheres of thought to which all mathematical ideas admit of being referred.—Sylvester, J. J.
Philosophical Magazine, Vol. 24 (1844), p. 285; Collected Mathematical Papers, Vol. 1, p. 91.
[110]. There are three ruling ideas, three so to say, spheres of thought, which pervade the whole body of mathematical science, to some one or other of which, or to two or all three of them combined, every mathematical truth admits of being referred; these are the three cardinal notions, of Number, Space and Order.
Arithmetic has for its object the properties of number in the abstract. In algebra, viewed as a science of operations, order is the predominating idea. The business of geometry is with the evolution of the properties of space, or of bodies viewed as existing in space.—Sylvester, J. J.
A Probationary Lecture on Geometry, York British Association Report (1844), Part 2; Collected Mathematical Papers, Vol. 2, p. 5.
[111]. The object of pure mathematics is those relations which may be conceptually established among any conceived elements whatsoever by assuming them contained in some ordered manifold; the law of order of this manifold must be subject to our choice; the latter is the case in both of the only conceivable kinds of manifolds, in the discrete as well as in the continuous.—Papperitz, E.
über das System der rein mathematischen Wissenschaften, Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung, Bd. 1, p. 36.