Selections from the adorable introduction to "Chebyshev and Fourier Spectral Methods"

[nostalgebraist]

This volume is not an almanac of unrelated facts, even though many sections and especially the appendices can be used to look up things, but rather is a travel guide to the Chebyshev City where the individual algorithms and identities interact to form a community. In this mathematical village, the special functions are special friends. A

Comments

[nietzscheansmut]

Intriguing.

[luinied]

Those are awesome quotes. Any chance you can make this entry public so I can link people to them?

[nostalgebraist]

Sure.

[firezdog]

The first goal of scientific writing must be to make science intelligible.

[firezdog]

One cannot object, "No, the first goal of scientific writing is to express the truth, or to present and justify one's belief that something is true." This is the method used in establishing a science. Once one starts writing about science, one presupposes that that about which one writes is known, and hence true.

[firezdog]

On the other hand, perhaps one cannot make something truly intelligible if it is in point of fact false.

[firezdog]

(That which is necessarily false is completely unintelligible -- for instance, a contradiction -- whereas that which is only contingently false is intelligible, but perhaps not in relation to everything else that is intelligible.)