It is possible, of course, to operate with figures mechanically, just as it is possible to speak like a parrot: but that hardly deserves the names of thought. It only becomes possible at all after the mathematical notation has, as a result of genuine thought, been so developed that it does the thinking for us, so to speak.
Gottlob Frege, J. L. Austin (1980). “The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry Into the Concept of Number”, p.4, Northwestern University Press
