Characteristic also of the temper of the Socratic enquiry is, (4) the proposal to discuss the teachableness of virtue under an hypothesis, after the manner of the
mathematicians; and (5) the repetition of the favourite doctrine which occurs so frequently in the earlier and more Socratic Dialogues, and gives a colour to all of them--that mankind only desire evil through ignorance; (6) the experiment of eliciting from the slave-boy the mathematical truth which is latent in him, and (7) the remark that he is all the better for knowing his ignorance.
Even to me, a
Mathematician of no mean standing, and the Grandfather of two most hopeful and perfectly regular Hexagons, to find myself in the midst of a crowd of rotating Polygons of the higher classes, is occasionally very perplexing.
He kept laughing sarcastically, he demonstrated, and at last contemptuously ceased to demonstrate, like a
mathematician who ceases to prove in various ways the accuracy of a problem that has already been proved.
Some
mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it."
(7) Porphyry, scholar,
mathematician, philosopher and historian, lived 233-305 (?) A.D.
For you surely would not regard the skilled mathematician as a dialectician?
Assuredly not, he said; I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
According to that celebrated
mathematician, these crater-like cavities had been dug by the hand of man.
A
mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer.
"My dear Planchet, I see with pleasure that you have not only become a
mathematician, but a philosopher."
However, the emphasis is clearly on these characters as teachers -- not
mathematicians. In terms of movie characters as
mathematicians, the theme rings true here as well:
Mathematicians rarely feature as movie characters, but when they do, they have some problems!
Students often wonder what
mathematicians actually do.