quote for the day

"In this march the imagination has played a notable role. For imagination has the pragmatic value that it leaps ahead of the slow-moving caravan of well-ordered thought and often scouts out reality long before its ponderous master . . . Yet ultimately, mathematics reaches pinnacles as high as those attained by the imagination in its most daring reconnoiters. And this conceals, perhaps, the ultimate paradox of science.  For in their prosaic plodding both logic and mathematics often outstrip their advance guard and show that the world of pure reason is stranger than the world of pure fancy." - Edward Kasner and James R. Newman