Observations placeholder
Hadamard, Jacques - Archimedes, Daunou and emotion as driver
Identifier
014469
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Pierre Claude François Daunou (18 August 1761 – 20 June 1840) was a French statesman and historian of the French Revolution and Empire
A description of the experience
An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field – Jacques Hadamard
I know by personal experience that powerful emotions may favour entirely different kinds of mental creation [to poetry], for example, the mathematical one; and in this connection, I should agree with this curious statement of Daunou:
In sciences, even the most rigid ones, no truth is born of the genius of an Archimedes or a Newton without a poetical emotion and some quivering of intelligent nature’