a mathematics calculating nothing...

"but is it not already an insult to call it anything so narrow as a game? is it not also a science, an art, hovering between these categories like muhammad's coffin between heaven and earth, a unique yoking of opposites, ancient and yet eternally new, mechanically constituted and yet an activity of the imagination alone, limited to a fixed geometric area but unlimited in its permutations, constantly evolving and yet sterile, a cogitation producing nothing, a mathematics calculating nothing, an art without an artwork, an architecture without substance and yet demonstrably more durable in its essence and actual form than all books and works, the only game that belongs to all people and all eras, while no one knows what god put it on earth to deaden boredom, sharpen the mind, and fortify the spirit? where does it begin, where does it end?..."

stefan zweig, chess story 1942