Quote of the day

by Brian Hayes

Published 9 January 2006

It is by no longer having to think about things that civilisation progresses.

—Joseph E. Stoy, Denotational Semantics

Responses from readers:

  • A comment from Greg Ross, 10 January 2006 at 12:24 pm

    Also: “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” — Alfred North Whitehead

  • A comment from brian, 10 January 2006 at 12:53 pm

    Lest someone think that Stoy was a plagiarist, I should point out that the sentence I quote from Stoy’s book is followed immediately by a reference to Whitehead’s Introduction to Mathematics.

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Tags for this article: quote.

Publication history

First publication: 9 January 2006

Converted to Eleventy framework: 22 April 2025

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