#mark kac

Most of von Neumann’s mathematics—rings of operators, continuous geometries, matrices of high finite order—was undertaken to find a satisfying philosophy upon which to found quantum theory. (Boolean algebra over sets is incompatible with Heisenberg uncertainty.) von Neumann confessed to Ulam that he had failed to find a philosophically satisfying basis for QM.

Creative people live in two worlds. One is the ordinary world which they share with others and in which they are not in any special way set apart from their fellow men. The other is private and it is in this world that the creative acts take place.

There are two kinds of geniuses, the "ordinary" and the magicians. An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and i would be just as good as, if we were only many times better... It is different with the magicians. They are, to us mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their mind is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they ave done, the process by which they have don't it is completely dark.