"A More Considerable Revolution than the Copernican"

"Recall the circle in which the theory of problems was caught: a problem is solvable only to the extent that it is "true but we always tend to define the truth of a problem by its solvability... The mathematician Abel (later followed by Galois) was perhaps the first to break this circle: he elaborated a whole method according to which solvability must follow from the form of a problem. Instead of seeking to find out by trial and error whether a given equation is solvable in general we must determine the conditions of the problem which progressively specifies the fields of solvability in such a way that the statement contains the seed of the solution. This is a radical reversal of the problem-solution relation, a more considerable revolution than the Copernican."


Deleuze, Difference and Repetition