Stanislaw Ulam vs. Charles Sanders Peirce
Side-by-side comparison of two thinkers
Stanislaw Ulam
1909 – 1984
Stanisław Marcin Ulam was a Polish-American mathematician who made important contributions in advancing the understanding of nuclear physics and computer science. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons, recognised the concept of the cellular automaton, invented the Monte Carlo method of computation, and championed nuclear pulse propulsion. In pure and applied mathematics, he proved a number of theorems and proposed several conjectures.
"In mathematics, as in physics, so much depends on chance, on a propitious moment."
Charles Sanders Peirce
1839 – 1914
Charles Sanders Peirce was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss, writing in 1934, Peirce was "the most original and versatile of America's philosophers and America's greatest logician". Bertrand Russell wrote in 1959, "he was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century and certainly the greatest American thinker ever".
"If the sensation that precedes the present by half a second were still immediately before me, then on the same principle, the sensation preceding that would be …"
Connections
Both wrote about: