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The following works in this volume

are reprinted under the arrangements listed below:

“Mathematics, the Mirror of Civilization”

reprinted from Mathematics for the Million by Lancelot Hogben.
By permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Copyright 1937, 1940, 1943, 1951 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
“Mathematics in Life and Thought” by A. R. Forsyth.
Reprinted by permission of the University College of Swansea.
“On Mathematical Method” from An Introduction to Mathematics by A. N. Whitehead.
Copyright 1948 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
“On the Nature of a Calculus” from A Treatise on Universal Algebra by A. N. Whitehead.
Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.
“Definition of Number” reprinted with permission
of The Macmillan Company and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
from Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.
First published in 1919.
“The Study of Mathematics” and “Mathematics and the Metaphysicians”
reprinted with permission of George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
from Mysticism and Logic by Bertrand Russell.
“New Names for Old” and “Beyond the Googol”
reprinted from Mathematics and the Imagination,
Copyright, 1940, by Edward Kasner and James R. Newman.
Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster, Inc.
“Fingerprints” and “The Empty Column”
reprinted with permission of The Macmillan Company and George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
from Number: the Language of Science by Tobias Dantzig.
Copyright 1930, 1933, 1939, 1959 by The Macmillan Company.
“The Seven Bridges of Königsberg” from The World of Mathematics,
Copyright, © 1956, by James R. Newman.
Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster, Inc.
“Measurement” and “Numerical Laws and the Use of Mathematics in Science”
from What Is Science? by Norman Campbell.
Published by Dover Publications, Inc., New York 14, N.Y.,
and reprinted through permission of the publisher.
“The Postulates of the Science of Space” from The World of Mathematics,
Copyright, © 1956, by James R. Newman. Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster, Inc.
“The Red and the Black” from The World of Mathematics,
Copyright, © 1956, by James R. Newman. Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster, Inc.

Portrait illustrations are by Fred Steffen

 Contents
of Volume 9

LANCE LOT HO G B E N 1
Mathematics, the Mirror
of Civilization 3

AN DREW RU SS E LL FORSYTH 24
Mathematics, in Life
and Thought 26

ALF RE D NORTH WH ITE H EAD 47

On Mathematical Method
from An Introduction to Mathematics 51
On the Nature of a Calculus 68

B E RTRAN D RU S S E LL 79
The Study of Mathematics 84
Mathematics and the Metaphysicians 95
Definition of Number 111

E DWARD KAS N E R & JAM E S R. N EWMAN 118

New Names for Old 121
Beyond the Googol 137

iii
iv Contents of Volume 9

TOB IAS DANTZIG 163

Fingerprints 165
The Empty Column 178

LEON HARD E U LE R 190

The Seven Bridges of Königsberg 193

NORMAN ROB E RT CAM PB E LL 202

Measurement 204
Numerical Laws and the Use
of Mathematics in Science 222

WI LLIAM KI NG D ON CLI FFORD 239

The Postulates
of the Science of Space 243

H E N RI POI NCARÉ 260

Space 265
Mathematical Creation 294
Chance 305

P I E RRE S I MON DE LAPLACE 321

Probability
from A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities 325

CHARLE S SAN DE RS PE I RCE 339

The Red and the Black 342
 Lancelot Hogben
1895–1975

L ancelot Hogben, British scientist and economist, was born in

Portsmouth in 1895. He was the son of a clergyman. Educated at
Cambridge, he has held university posts in England, Scotland,
South Africa and Canada.
Hogben’s interest in the problems of man in society dates from a
very early age when he was introduced to the plays of
George Bernard Shaw and to the socialist literature of the Fabian
Society by a schoolmistress at the Tottenham County School. One
of man’s problems arises from his failure to understand the scientific
language of his culture. To bridge the gap that has developed between
the average man and his scientific environment, Hogben wrote Science
for the Citizen and Mathematics for the Million. The following selection
is taken from the latter work.
Hogben has written and lectured not only on mathematics but on
zoology, social biology, natural history, sociology, economics,
medical statistics, and probability. He has also written an illustrated
history of 30,000 years of human visual communication, From Cave
Painting to Comic Strips.

Isocial
n Mathematics, the Mirror of Civilization, Hogben brings the zeal of a
reformer to the task of rescuing mathematics from the fate of
becoming a priestcraft.
Since much of man’s relation to man and nature has come to be
treated in mathematical terms, it is dangerous to ignore the new
language. We run the risk of leaving the power to control our political
and material welfare in the hands of specialists. If these specialists
have, as did the ancient Egyptian priests, a vested interest in mystify-
1
2 Lancelot Hogben

ing the people, an unhealthy situation develops. “No society,” says

Hogben, “is safe in the hands of its clever people.” In our atomic
age, Hogben’s apprehensions seem particularly valid.
In contradistinction to most of the other authors represented in
this volume, Hogben does not have much use for mathematics as a
purely speculative activity. He is solidly planted in opposition to
the view of mathematics that is usually associated with Plato.1 Plato
held that mathematics reflects absolute and eternal truths, but Hogben
sees it as merely a useful language, with rules based on convenience,
like ordinary grammar. In this respect, he has much in common
with Poincaré.
But Poincaré, like Russell, Whitehead, and Forsyth,2 argues for
the study of mathematics as an esthetic experience which is
undertaken for its own sake. To this, Hogben is opposed. His broad
outline of the history of mathematics shows mathematical invention
and discovery only as the result of man’s effort to control his
environment.
Many of Hogben’s ideas are thus controversial. You may find
yourself with him or against him. But if you are baffled and
discouraged by the whole world of mathematics, Hogben is
heartening. He flays with caustic wit those who have brought you
to your present condition. They have concealed from you, he says,
the story of the human origin of mathematics. It is this story that he
tells.
1
See The Republic, Book VII, in Great Books of the Western World.
2
See the selections from the writings of these authors in this volume.
 Mathematics, the Mirror
of Civilization

here is a story about Diderot, the Encyclopaedist and materialist,

a foremost figure in the intellectual awakening which immediately
preceded the French Revolution. Diderot was staying at the Russian
court, where his elegant flippancy was entertaining the nobility. Fearing
that the faith of her retainers was at stake, the Tsaritsa commissioned
Euler, the most distinguished mathematician of the time, to debate with
Diderot in public. Diderot was informed that a mathematician had
established a proof of the existence of God. He was summoned to court
without being told the name of his opponent. Before the assembled court,
Euler accosted him with the following pronouncement, which was uttered
with due gravity: donc Dieu existe répondez!” Algebra was Arabic
to Diderot. Unfortunately he did not realize that was the trouble. Had
he realized that algebra is just a language in which we describe the sizes
of things in contrast to the ordinary languages which we use to describe
the sorts of things in the world, he would have asked Euler to translate
the first half of the sentence into French.1 Translated freely into English,
it may be rendered: “A number x can be got by first adding a number a
to a number b multiplied by itself a certain number of times, and then
dividing the whole by the number of b’s multiplied together. So God
exists after all. What have you got to say now?” If Diderot had asked
Euler to illustrate the first part of his remark for the clearer understanding
of the Russian court, Euler might have replied that x is 3 when a is 1
and b is 2 and n is 3, or that x is 21 when a is 3 and b is 3 and n is 4, and
so forth. Euler’s troubles would have begun when the court wanted to
know how the second part of the sentence follows from the first part.
Like many of us, Diderot had stagefright when confronted with a
sentence in size language. He left the court abruptly amid the titters of the
1. For a critical evaluation of this version of the Euler-Diderot anecdote, which incorrectly
portrays Diderot as a mathematical illiterate, see A. M. Wilson, Diderot (1957), p. 91
[Ed.].

3
4 Lancelot Hogben

assembly, confined himself to his chambers, demanded a safe conduct,

and promptly returned to France.
Though he could not know it, Diderot had the last laugh before the
court of history. The clericalism which Diderot fought was overthrown,
and though it has never lacked the services of an eminent mathematician,
the supernaturalism which Euler defended has been in retreat ever since.
One eminent contemporary astronomer in his Gifford Lectures tells us
that Dirac has discovered p and q numbers. Donc Dieu existe. Another
distinguished astronomer pauses, while he entertains us with astonishing
calculations about the distance of the stars, to award M. le grand
Architecte an honorary degree in mathematics. There were excellent
precedents long before the times of Euler and Diderot. For the first
mathematicians were the priestly calendar makers who calculated the
onset of the seasons. The Egyptian temples were equipped with
Nilometers with which the priests made painstaking records of the rising
and falling of the sacred river. With these they could predict the flooding
of the Nile with great accuracy. Their papyri show that they possessed a
language of measurement very different from the pretentious phraseology
with which they fobbed off their prophecies on the laity. The masses
could not see the connection between prophecy and reality, because the
Nilometers communicated with the river by underground channels,
skilfully concealed from the eye of the people. The priests of Egypt used
one language when they wrote in the proceedings of a learned society
and another language when they gave an interview to the “sob sisters”
of the Sunday press.
In the ancient world writing and reading were still a mystery and a
craft. The plain man could not decipher the Rhind papyrus in which
the scribe Ahmes wrote down the laws of measuring things. Civilized
societies in the twentieth century have democratized the reading and
writing of sort language. Consequently the plain man can understand
scientific discoveries if they do not involve complicated measurements.
He knows something about evolution. The priestly accounts of the
creation have fallen into discredit. So mysticism has to take refuge in
the atom. The atom is a safe place not because it is small, but because
you have to do complicated measurements and use underground channels
to find your way there. These underground channels are concealed from
the eye of the people because the plain man has not been taught to read
and write size language. Three centuries ago, when priests conducted their
services in Latin, Protestant reformers founded grammar schools so that
people could read the open Bible. The time has now come for another
 MATH E MATICS , TH E M I RROR OF CIVI LIZATION 5

Reformation. People must learn to read and write the language of

measurement so that they can understand the open bible of modern
science.
In the time of Diderot the lives and happiness of individuals might
still depend on holding the correct beliefs about religion. To-day the
lives and happiness of people depend more than most of us realize upon
the correct interpretation of public statistics which are kept by government
offices. When a committee of experts announce that the average man
can live on his unemployment allowance, or the average child is getting
sufficient milk, the mere mention of an average or the citation of a list of
figures is enough to paralyse intelligent criticism. In reality half or more
than half the population may not be getting enough to live on when the
average man or child has enough. The majority of people living to-day
in civilized countries cannot read and write freely in size language, just
as the majority of people living in the times of Wycliff and Luther were
ignorant of Latin in which religious controversy was carried on. The
modern Diderot has got to learn the language of size in self-defence,
because no society is safe in the hands of its clever people.
Long before clever people started reading and writing the ordinary
languages in which we describe different sorts of things, other people
who were not so terribly clever had learnt to talk. The plain man of to-
day, that is to say, the reader or the writer of this book, has a great
advantage over the audiences who listened to the priestly oracles of the
ancient world. Though we may not read or write it, we have all learned
to talk in size language. If we were asked what distinguishes the men of to-
day, the men of the machine age, from the men who lived before the
American or French Revolution, we might give many answers. Very few
would give the answer that Burke gave. About forty years after the
incident we have been discussing, Burke wrote a vitriolic denunciation
of the social revolution heralded by the Encyclopaedists. With this
difference that Burke wrote elegant, sonorous, and commanding prose,
many passages in it recall familiar descriptions of current events in Russia,
as they are reflected in the dented mirror of the daily press. In one of the
most resonant and also the silliest passages of his reflections, Burke
pronounces an eloquent obituary on the ancien régime. What raises his
anger to white heat is not that Europe will become a continent of
shopkeepers. It is that Europe will become a continent of calculators.
“The Age of Chivalry is gone. That of sophists, economists, and calculators
has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. . . .”
The first men who dwelt in cities were talking animals. The man of the
6 Lancelot Hogben

Machine Age is a calculating animal. We live in a welter of figures: cookery

recipes, railway time-tables, unemployment aggregates, fines, taxes, war
debts, overtime schedules, speed limits, bowling averages, betting odds,
billiard scores, calories, babies’ weights, clinical temperatures, rainfall, hours
of sunshine, motoring records, power indices, gas-meter readings, bank
rates, freight rates, death rates, discount, interest, lotteries, wave-lengths,
and tire pressures. Every night, when he winds up his watch, the modern
man adjusts a scientific instrument of a precision and delicacy
unimaginable to the most cunning artificers of Alexandria in its prime.
So much is commonplace. What escapes our notice is that in doing
these things we have learnt to use devices which presented tremendous
difficulties to the most brilliant mathematicians of antiquity. Ratios, limits,
acceleration are not remote abstractions, dimly apprehended by the
solitary genius. They are photographed upon every page of our existence.
In the course of the adventure upon which we are going to embark we
shall constantly find that we have no difficulty in answering questions
which tortured the minds of very clever mathematicians in ancient times.
This is not because you and I are very clever people. It is because we
inherit a social culture which has suffered the impact of material forces
foreign to the intellectual life of the ancient world. The most brilliant
intellect is a prisoner within its own social inheritance.
An illustration will help to make this quite definite at the outset. The
Eleatic philosopher Zeno set all his contemporaries guessing by
propounding a series of conundrums, of which the one most often quoted
is the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. Here is the problem about
which the inventors of school geometry argued till they had speaker’s
throat and writer’s cramp. Achilles runs a race with the tortoise. He runs
ten times as fast as the tortoise. The tortoise has 100 yards’ start. Now, says
Zeno, Achilles runs 100 yards and reaches the place where the tortoise
started. Meanwhile the tortoise has gone a tenth as far as Achilles, and is
therefore 10 yards ahead of Achilles. Achilles runs this 10 yards.
Meanwhile the tortoise has run a tenth as far as Achilles, and is therefore
1 yard in front of him. Achilles runs this 1 yard. Meanwhile the tortoise
has run a tenth of a yard and is therefore a tenth of a yard in front of
Achilles. Achilles runs this tenth of a yard. Meanwhile the tortoise goes a
tenth of a tenth of a yard. He is now a hundredth of a yard in front of
Achilles. When Achilles has caught up this hundredth of a yard, the
tortoise is a thousandth of a yard in front. So, argued Zeno, Achilles is
always getting nearer the tortoise, but can never quite catch him up.
You must not imagine that Zeno and all the wise men who argued the
 MATH E MATICS , TH E M I RROR OF CIVI LIZATION 7

point failed to recognize that Achilles really did get past the tortoise.
What troubled them was, where is the catch? You may have been asking
the same question. The important point is that you did not ask it for the
same reason which prompted them. What is worrying you is why they
thought up funny little riddles of that sort. Indeed, what you are really
concerned with is a historical problem. I am going to show you in a minute
that the problem is not one which presents any mathematical difficulty to
you. You know how to translate it into size language, because you inherit
a social culture which is separated from theirs by the collapse of two
great civilizations and by two great social revolutions. The difficulty of
the ancients was not a historical difficulty. It was a mathematical difficulty.
They had not evolved a size language into which this problem could be
freely translated.
The Greeks were not accustomed to speed limits and passenger-luggage
allowances. They found any problem involving division very much more
difficult than a problem involving multiplication. They had no way of
doing division to any order of accuracy, because they relied for calculation
on the mechanical aid of the counting frame or abacus. They could not
do sums on paper. For all these and other reasons which we shall meet
again and again, the Greek mathematician was unable to see something
that we see without taking the trouble to worry about whether we see it
or not. If we go on piling up bigger and bigger quantities, the pile goes
on growing more rapidly without any end as long as we go on adding
more. If we can go on adding larger and larger quantities indefinitely
without coming to a stop, it seemed to Zeno’s contemporaries that we
ought to be able to go on adding smaller and still smaller quantities
indefinitely without reaching a limit. They thought that in one case the
pile goes on for ever, growing more rapidly, and in the other it goes on
for ever, growing more slowly. There was nothing in their number
language to suggest that when the engine slows beyond a certain point,
it chokes off.
To see this clearly we will first put down in numbers the distance
which the tortoise traverses at different stages of the race after Achilles
starts. As we have described it above, the tortoise moves 10 yards in
stage 1, 1 yard in stage 2, one-tenth of a yard in stage 3, one-hundredth
of a yard in stage 4, etc. Suppose we had a number language like the
Greeks and Romans, or the Hebrews, who used letters of the alphabet.
Using the one that is familiar to us because it is still used for clocks,
graveyards, and law-courts, we might write the total of all the distances
the tortoise ran before Achilles caught him up like this:
8 Lancelot Hogben

We have put “and so on” because the ancient peoples got into great
difficulties when they had to handle numbers more than a few thousands.
Apart from the fact that we have left the tail of the series to your
imagination (and do not forget that the tail is most of the animal if it
goes on for ever), notice another disadvantage about this script. There is
absolutely nothing to suggest to you how the distances at each stage of
the race are connected with one another. To-day we have a number
vocabulary which makes this relation perfectly evident when we write it
down as:

In this case we put “and so on” to save ourselves trouble, not because we
have not the right number-words. These number-words were borrowed
from the Hindus, who learnt to write number language after Zeno and
Euclid had gone to their graves. A social revolution, the Protestant
Reformation, gave us schools which made this number language the
common property of mankind. A second social upheaval, the French
Revolution, taught us to use a reformed spelling. Thanks to the Education
Acts of the nineteenth century, this reformed spelling is part of the
common fund of knowledge shared by almost every sane individual in
the English-speaking world. Let us write the last total, using this reformed
spelling, which we call decimal notation. That is to say:

We have only to use the reformed spelling to remind ourselves that this
can be put in a more snappy form:

We recognize the fraction 0.i as a quantity that is less than 2 10 and more
than 1 10 . If we have not forgotten the arithmetic we learnt at school, we
may even remember that 0.i corresponds with the fraction 1 9 . This means
that the longer we make the sum, 0.1+0.01+0.001, etc., the nearer it gets
to 1 9 , and it never grows bigger than 1 9 . The total of all the yards the
tortoise moves till there is no distance between himself and Achilles makes
up just 11 1 9 yards, and no more.
 MATH E MATICS , TH E M I RROR OF CIVI LIZATION 9

You will now begin to see what was meant by saying that the riddle
presents no mathematical difficulty to you. You have a number language
constructed so that it can take into account a possibility which
mathematicians describe by a very impressive name. They call it the
convergence of an infinite series to a limiting value. Put in plain words,
this only means that, if you go on piling up smaller and smaller quantities
as long as you can, you may get a pile of which the size is not made
measurably larger by adding any more. The immense difficulty which the
mathematicians of the ancient world experienced when they dealt with a
process of division carried on indefinitely, or with what modern
mathematicians call infinite series, limits, transcendental numbers, irrational
quantities, and so forth, provides an example of a great social truth borne
out by the whole history of human knowledge. Fruitful intellectual activity
of the cleverest people draws its strength from the common knowledge
which all of us share. Beyond a certain point clever people can never
transcend the limitations of the social culture they inherit. When clever
people pride themselves on their own isolation, we may well wonder whether
they are very clever after all. Our studies in mathematics are going to
show us that whenever the culture of a people loses contact with the common
life of mankind and becomes exclusively the plaything of a leisure class, it
is becoming a priestcraft. It is destined to end, as does all priestcraft, in
superstition. To be proud of intellectual isolation from the common life of
mankind and to be disdainful of the great social task of education is as
stupid as it is wicked. It is the end of progress in knowledge. History
shows that superstitions are not manufactured by the plain man. They are
invented by neurotic intellectuals with too little to do. The mathematician
and the plain man each need one another. Maybe the Western world is
about to be plunged irrevocably into barbarism. If it escapes this fate, the
men and women of the leisure state which is now within our grasp will
regard the democratization of mathematics as a decisive step in the advance
of civilization.
In such a time as ours the danger of retreat into barbarism is very real.
We may apply to mathematics the words in which Cobbett explained the
uses of grammar to the working-men of his own day when there was no
public system of free schools. In the first of his letters on English grammar
for a working boy, Cobbett wrote these words: “But, to the acquiring of
this branch of knowledge, my dear son, there is one motive, which,
though it ought, at all times, to be strongly felt, ought, at the present
time, to be so felt in an extraordinary degree. I mean that desire which
every man, and especially every young man, should entertain to be able
to assert with effect the rights and liberties of his country. When you come
10 Lancelot Hogben

to read the history of those Laws of England by which the freedom of

the people has been secured . . . you will find that tyranny has no
enemy so formidable as the pen. And, while you will see with exultation
the long-imprisoned, the heavily-fined, the banished William Prynne,
returning to liberty, borne by the people from Southampton to London,
over a road strewed with flowers: then accusing, bringing to trial and to
the block, the tyrants from whose hands he and his country had unjustly
and cruelly suffered; while your heart and the heart of every young man
in the kingdom will bound with joy at the spectacle, you ought all to bear
in mind, that, without a knowledge of grammar, Mr. Prynne could never
have performed any of those acts by which his name has been thus
preserved, and which have caused his name to be held in honour.”
To-day economic tyranny has no more powerful friend than the
calculating prodigy. Without a knowledge of mathematics, the grammar
of size and order, we cannot plan the rational society in which there will
be leisure for all and poverty for none. If we are inclined to be a little
afraid of the prospect, our first step towards understanding this grammar
is to realize that the reasons which repel many people from studying it
are not at all discreditable. As mathematics has been taught and
expounded in schools no effort is made to show its social history, its
significance in our own social lives, the immense dependence of civilized
mankind upon it. Neither as children nor as adults are we told how the
knowledge of this grammar has been used again and again throughout
history to assist in the liberation of mankind from superstition. We are
not shown how it may be used by us to defend the liberties of the people.
Let us see why this is so.
The educational system of north-western Europe was largely moulded
by three independent factors in the period of the Reformation. One was
linguistic in the ordinary sense. To weaken the power of the Church as
an economic overlord it was necessary to destroy the influence of the
Church on the imagination of the people. The Protestant Reformers
appealed to the recognized authority of scripture to show that the priestly
practices were innovations. They had to make the scriptures an open book.
The invention of printing was the mechanical instrument which destroyed
the intellectual power of the Pope. Instruction in Latin and Greek was a
corollary of the doctrine of the open Bible. This prompted the great
educational innovation of John Knox and abetted the more parsimonious
founding of grammar schools in England. The ideological front against
popery and the wealthy monasteries strengthened its strategic position by
new translations and critical inspection of the scriptural texts. That is one
 MATH E MATICS , TH E M I RROR OF CIVI LIZATION 11

reason why classical scholarship occupied a place of high honour in the

educational system of the middle classes.
The language of size owes its position in Western education to two
different social influences. While revolt against the authority of the
Church was gathering force, and before the reformed doctrine had begun
to have a wide appeal for the merchants and craftsmen of the medieval
boroughs, the mercantile needs of the Hanse had already led to the
founding of special schools in Germany for the teaching of the new
arithmetic which Europe had borrowed from the Arabs. An astonishing
proportion of the books printed in the three years after the first press was
set up were commercial arithmetics. Luther vindicated the four merchant
gospels of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division with astute
political sagacity when he announced the outlandish doctrine that every
boy should be taught to calculate. The grammar of numbers was chained
down to commercial uses before people could foresee the vast variety of
ways in which it was about to invade man’s social life.
Geometry, already divorced from the art of calculation, did not enter
into Western education by the same route. Apart from the stimulus which
the study of dead languages received from the manufacture of Bibles,
classical pursuits were encouraged because the political theories of the
Greek philosophers were congenial to the merchants who were aspiring
to a limited urban democracy. The appeal of the city-state democracy to
the imagination of the wealthier bourgeois lasted till after the French
Revolution, when it was laid to rest in the familiar funeral urns of mural
decoration. The leisure class of the Greek city-states played with geometry
as people play with crossword puzzles and chess to-day. Plato taught that
geometry was the highest exercise to which human leisure could be
devoted. So geometry became included in European education as a part
of classical scholarship, without any clear connection with the
contemporary reality of measuring Drake’s “world encompassed.” Those
who taught Euclid did not understand its social use, and generations of
schoolboys have studied Euclid without being told how a later geometry,
which grew out of Euclid’s teaching in the busy life of Alexandria,
made it possible to measure the size of the world. Those measurements
blew up the pagan pantheon of star gods and blazed the trail for the
great navigations. The revelation of how much of the surface of our
world was still unexplored was the solid ground for what we call the
faith of Columbus.
Plato’s exaltation of mathematics as an august and mysterious ritual
had its roots in dark superstitions which troubled, and fanciful puerilities
12 Lancelot Hogben

which entranced, people who were living through the childhood of

civilization, when even the cleverest people could not clearly distinguish
the difference between saying that 13 is a “prime” number and saying
that 13 is an unlucky number. His influence on education has spread a
veil of mystery over mathematics and helped to preserve the queer
freemasonry of the Pythagorean brotherhoods, whose members were put
to death for revealing mathematical secrets now printed in school-books.
It reflects no discredit on anybody if this veil of mystery makes the
subject distasteful. Plato’s great achievement was to invent a religion
which satisfies the emotional needs of people who are out of harmony
with their social environment, and just too intelligent or too
individualistic to seek sanctuary in the cruder forms of animism. The
curiosity of the men who first speculated about atoms, studied the
properties of the lodestone, watched the result of rubbing amber, dissected
animals, and catalogued plants in the three centuries before Aristotle
wrote his epitaph on Greek science, had banished personalities from
natural and familiar objects. Plato placed animism beyond the reach of
experimental exposure by inventing a world of “universals.” This world
of universals was the world as God knows it, the “real” world of which
our own is but the shadow. In this “real” world symbols of speech and
number are invested with the magic which departed from the bodies of
beasts and the trunks of trees as soon as they were dissected and described.
The Timaeus is a fascinating anthology of the queer perversities to which
this magic of symbolism could be pushed. Real earth, as opposed to the
solid earth on which we build houses, is an equilateral triangle. Real
water, as opposed to what is sometimes regarded as a beverage, is a right-
angled triangle. Real fire, as opposed to fire against which you insure, is
an isosceles triangle. Real air, as opposed to the air which you pump into
a tire, is a scalene triangle [see drawing]. Lest you should find this hard to
credit, read how Plato turned the geometry of the sphere into a magical
explanation of man’s origin. God, he tells us, “imitating the spherical
shape of the universe, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical
body, that, namely, which we now term the head.” In order that the
head “might not tumble about among the deep and high places of the
earth, but might be able to get out of the one and over the other,” it was
provided with “the body to be a vehicle and means of locomotion, which
consequently had length and was furnished with four limbs extended
and jointed. . . .” This supremacy of the head is very flattering to intellectuals
who have no practical problems to occupy them. So it is not surprising
that Plato’s peculiar metaphysics retained its influence on education after
his daring project for a planned society ceased to be thought a suitable
 MATH E MATICS , TH E M I RROR OF CIVI LIZATION 13

doctrine for young people to study. An educational system which was

based on Plato’s teaching is apt to entrust the teaching of mathematics to
people who put the head before the stomach, and who would tumble
about the deep and high places of the earth if they had to teach another
subject. Naturally this repels healthy people for whom symbols are merely
the tools of organized social experience, and attracts those who use symbols
to escape from our shadow world in which men battle for the little truth
they can secure into a “real” world in which truth seems to be self-evident.

Plato Took Measurement Out of Geometry

and Put Magic in Its Place
The real world of Plato was a world of form from which matter was banished.
(a) An equilateral triangle (i.e. one of which all three sides are equal) is the elemental earth
form.
(b) A right-angled triangle is the spirit of water. (To find spirit in water is the most advanced
kind of magic.)
(c) A scalene triangle with no equal sides is the spirit of the air.
(d) An isosceles triangle (i.e. one of which only two sides are equal) is the elemental fire.
(If you do not know these names, note their meaning. You may meet them again. You have been
warned.)
The fact that mathematicians are often like this may be why they are so
inclined to keep the high mysteries of their Pythagorean brotherhood to
themselves. To ordinary people, the perfection of their “real” world savours
of unreality. The world in which ordinary people live is a world of struggle
and failure, trial and error. In the mathematical world everything is
obvious—once you have got used to it. What is rarely explained to us
 Mathematics in Everyday Life
This figure is taken from Agricola’s famous sixteenth-century treatise on mining technology. At that time the
miners were the aristocrats of labour, and the book called attention to a host of new scientific problems which
had been neglected in the slave civilizations of antiquity, when there was little co-operation between
theoretical speculation and practical experience. Having measured the distance HG which is the length of the
stretched rope, you can get the distance you have to bore horizontally to reach the shaft, or the depth to which
the shaft must be sunk, if you want to reach the horizontal boring. You will see easily with a scale diagram
that the ratio of the horizontal cutting to the measured distance HG is the ratio of the two measurable
distances N:M. Likewise the ratio of the shaft depth to HG is O:M. . . .

14
 MATH E MATICS , TH E M I RROR OF CIVI LIZATION 15

is that it may have taken the human race a thousand years to see that one
step in a mathematical argument is “obvious.” How the Nilometer works
is obvious to you if you are a priest in the temple. If you are outside the
temple, it can only become obvious through tracing out the subterranean
channel which connects the temple with the river of man’s social
experience. Educational methods which are mixed up with priestcraft
and magic have contrived to keep the rising and falling, the perpetual
movement of the river from our scrutiny. So they have hidden from us
the romance of what might be the greatest saga of man’s struggle with
the elements. Plato, in whose school our teachers have grown up, did
not approve of making observations and applying mathematics to arrange
them and co-ordinate them. In one of the dialogues he makes Socrates,
his master, use words which might equally well apply to many of the
text-books of mechanics which are still used. “The starry heavens which
we behold is wrought upon a visible ground and therefore, although
the fairest and most perfect of visible things, must necessarily be deemed
inferior far to the true motions of absolute swiftness and absolute
intelligence. . . . These are to be apprehended by reason and intelligence
but not by sight. . . . The spangled heavens should be used as a pattern
and with a view to that higher knowledge. But the astronomer will
never imagine that the proportions of night to day . . . or of the stars to
these and to one another can also be eternal . . . and it is equally absurd
to take so much pains in investigating their exact truth. . . . In astronomy as in
geometry we should employ problems, and let the heavens alone, if we would
approach the subject in the right way and so make the natural gift of
reason to be of any use.”
This book will narrate how the grammar of measurement and counting
has evolved under the pressure of man’s changing social achievements,
how in successive stages it has been held in check by the barriers of
custom, how it has been used in charting a universe which can be
commanded when its laws are obeyed, but can never be propitiated by
ceremonial and sacrifice. As the outline of the story develops, one
difficulty which many people experience will become less formidable.
The expert in mathematics is essentially a technician. So his chief concern
in teaching is to make other technicians. Mathematical books are largely
packed with exercises which are designed to give proficiency in
workmanship. This makes us discouraged because of the immense
territory which we have to traverse before we can get insight into the
kind of mathematics which is used in modern science and social statistics.
The fact is that modern mathematics does not borrow so very much from
16 Lancelot Hogben

antiquity. To be sure, every useful development in mathematics rests on

the historical foundation of some earlier branch. At the same time every
new branch liquidates the usefulness of clumsier tools which preceded
it. Although algebra, trigonometry, the use of graphs, the calculus all
depend on the rules of Greek geometry, scarcely more than a dozen
from the two hundred propositions of Euclid’s elements are essential to
help us in understanding how to use them. The remainder are
complicated ways of doing things which can be done more simply when
we know later branches of mathematics. For the mathematical technician
these complications may provide a useful discipline. The person who
wants to understand the place of mathematics in modern civilization is
merely distracted and disheartened by them. What follows is for those
who have been already disheartened and distracted, and have
consequently forgotten what they may have learned already or fail to see
the meaning or usefulness of what they remember. So we shall begin at
the very beginning.
Two views are commonly held about mathematics. One comes from
Plato. This is that mathematical statements represent eternal truths. Plato’s
doctrine was used by the German philosopher, Kant, as a stick with
which to beat the materialists of his time, when revolutionary writings
like those of Diderot were challenging priestcraft. Kant thought that the
principles of geometry were eternal, and that they were totally
independent of our sense organs. It happened that Kant wrote just before
biologists discovered that we have a sense organ, part of what is called
the internal ear, sensitive to the pull of gravitation. Since that discovery,
the significance of which was first fully recognized by the German
physicist, Ernst Mach, the geometry which Kant knew has been brought
down to earth by Einstein. It no longer dwells in the sky where Plato
put it. We know that geometrical statements when applied to the real
world are only approximate truths. The theory of relativity has been
very unsettling to mathematicians, and it has now become a fashion to
say that mathematics is only a game. Of course, this does not tell us
anything about mathematics. It only tells us something about the cultural
limitations of some mathematicians. When a man says that mathematics
is a game, he is making a private statement. He is telling us something
about himself, his own attitude to mathematics. He is not telling us
anything about the public meaning of a mathematical statement.
If mathematics is a game, there is no reason why people should play it
if they do not want to. With football, it belongs to those amusements
without which life would be endurable. The view which we shall explore
 MATH E MATICS , TH E M I RROR OF CIVI LIZATION 17

is that mathematics is the language of size, and that it is an essential part

of the equipment of an intelligent citizen to understand this language.
If the rules of mathematics are rules of grammar, there is no stupidity
involved when we fail to see that a mathematical truth is obvious. The
rules of ordinary grammar are not obvious. They have to be learnt. They
are not eternal truths. They are conveniences without whose aid truths
about the sorts of things in the world cannot be communicated from one
person to another. In Cobbett’s memorable words, Mr. Prynne would
not have been able to impeach Archbishop Laud if his command of
grammar had been insufficient to make himself understood. So it is with
mathematics, the grammar of size. The rules of mathematics are rules to
be learnt. If they are formidable, they are formidable because they are
unfamiliar when you first meet them—like gerunds or nominative
absolutes. They are also formidable because in all languages there are so
many rules and words to memorize before we can read newspapers or
pick up radio news from foreign stations. Everybody knows that being
able to chatter in several foreign languages is not a sign of great social
intelligence. Neither is being able to chatter in the language of size.
Real social intelligence lies in the use of a language, in applying the
right words in the right context. It is important to know the language of
size, because entrusting the laws of human society, social statistics,
population, man’s hereditary make-up, the balance of trade to the isolated
mathematician without checking his conclusions is like letting a
committee of philologists manufacture the truths of human, animal, or
plant anatomy from the resources of their own imaginations.
You will often hear people say that nothing is more certain than that
two and two make four. The statement that two and two make four is not
a mathematical statement. The mathematical statement to which people
refer, correctly stated, is as follows:
2 + 2 = 4.
This can be translated: “to 2 add 2 to get 4.” This is not necessarily
a statement of something which always happens in the real world. The
illustration [on page 18] shows that in the real world you do not always
find that you have 4 when you have added 2 to 2. To say 2 + 2 = 4
merely illustrates the meaning of the verb “add” when it is used to
translate the mathematical verb “+”. To say that 2 + 2 = 4 is a true
statement is just a grammatical convention about the verb “+” and the
nouns “2” and “4.” In English grammar it is true in the same sense to
say that the plural of “mouse” is “mice,” or, if you prefer it, “add mouse to
18 Lancelot Hogben

mouse to get mice.” In English grammar it is untrue to say that the

plural of “house” is “hice.” Saying “2 + 2 = 2” is false in precisely the
same sense. A slight change in the meaning of the word “add,” as used
to translate “+,” makes it a perfectly correct statement about the apparatus
[in the figure below]. Such changes of meaning are confusing. The object
of grammar is to control the freedom of words so that there is no congestion
of the intellectual traffic. As a statement about the real world, saying that

In the real world you do not always find that you have got four when you add two and two.
Try filling this with water. Its laws of “addition” would be:

The dot is put in to show that the kind of addition used here is not the kind of addition
(+ without a dot) which applies to a vessel which cannot leak, and is so large that it cannot
be filled.

the British houses of Parliament are in Glasgow, is a plain lie. As a

statement of grammar, it is a true example of how the plural of “house”
is formed. If a British Radical member said that the Hice of Parliament
were treating the unemployed of Glasgow with shameless frivolity, he
might convey a profound and important truth about the real world to a
few bright people. As a statement of grammar, it would be false. Many
would miss the point and wonder whether he were certifiable. Unlike
Mr. Prynne, who understood grammar, he would fail to advance the
liberties of the people.
We must not be surprised if we find that the rules of mathematics are
not always a perfect description of how we measure the distance of a star,
or count heads in a population. The rules of English grammar are a
 MATH E MATICS , TH E M I RROR OF CIVI LIZATION 19

very imperfect description of how English is used. The people who

formulated them were preoccupied with translating the Bible and other
classical texts. So they were over-anxious to find exact equivalents for
the peculiarities of Greek and Latin. They were like the first zoologists
who used words for the limbs and organs of the human body when
describing the peculiar anatomy of the insect. The English grammar
taught in English schools is rather primitive zoology. Also it is
essentially a description of the habits of speech prevailing in the English
professional class, from which writers of books on grammar are drawn.
When the American from New England says “gotten,” he is using what
was the correct past participle of the strong verb “to get” in Mayflower
times. When the English country labourer says “we be going,” he is
correctly using one of the three original verbs which have been used
to make the roots of the modern mixed verb “to be.” When he says
“yourn,” he is using one of two once equally admissible and equally
fashionable forms introduced by analogy about the time when Chaucer
wrote the Canterbury Tales. To say that “are” and “yours” are grammatically
correct is merely to say that we have agreed to adopt the habits of the
more prosperous townspeople. When Mr. Shaw is dead, and hence a
topic for grammarians, we shall say that “dont” is the correct way to
write “do not.” Almost certainly we shall soon admit “it is me” as correct
grammar. The rules of mathematical grammar also change. In modern
vector analysis the rules for using “+” are not the rules we learned at
school.
If we can unearth milestones of man’s social pilgrimage in the language
of everyday life, it is much more easy to do so when we study the grammar
of mathematics. The language in which people describe the different
sorts of things there are in the world is vastly more primitive and more
conservative than the size languages which have been multiplied to cope
with the increasing precision of man’s control over nature. In the world
which is open to public inspection, the world of inorganic and organic
nature, man was not compelled to enlarge the scope of language to
describe any new sorts of phenomena between 2000 B.C. and the researches
of Faraday and Hertz, the father of radio. Even electric and magnetic
attractions were recognized as a special sort of thing before there were
any historians in the world. In the seventh century B.C. Thales recorded
the attraction of small particles to a piece of amber (Greek “electron”)
when rubbed. The Chinese already knew about the lodestone or natural
magnet. Since about 1000 B.C ., when some men broke away from
picture writing or script like the Chinese which associates sounds
20 Lancelot Hogben

with picture symbols, and first began to use an alphabet based purely on
how words sound, there has only been one conspicuous invention
introduced for describing the qualities of things in the world. This was
made by biologists in the eighteenth century, when the confusion existing
in the old herbals of medicinal plants forced them to invent an
international language in which no confusion is possible. The clear
description of the immense variety of organic beings has been made
possible by the deliberate introduction of unfamiliar words. These words,
like Bellis perennis, the common daisy, or Pulex irritans, the common flea, are
taken from dead languages. Any meaning for which the biologist has no
use lies buried in a social context forgotten long ago. In much the same
way the North Europeans had borrowed their alphabet of sound symbols
from the picture scripts, and buried the associations of distracting metaphors
in the symbols used by the more sophisticated people of the ancient world.
The language of mathematics differs from that of everyday life, because
it is essentially a rationally planned language. The languages of size
have no place for private sentiment, either of the individual or of the
nation. They are international languages like the binomial nomenclature
of natural history. In dealing with the immense complexity of his social
life man has not yet begun to apply inventiveness to the rational planning
of ordinary language when describing different kinds of institutions
and human behaviour. The language of everyday life is clogged with
sentiment, and the science of human nature has not advanced so far that
we can describe individual sentiment in a clear way. So constructive
thought about human society is hampered by the same conservatism as
embarrassed the earlier naturalists. Nowadays people do not differ about
what sort of animal is meant by cimex or pediculus, because these words
are only used by people who use them in one way. They still can and
often do mean a lot of different things when they say that a mattress is
infested with bugs or lice. The study of man’s social life has not yet
brought forth a Linnaeus. So an argument about the “withering away of
the state” may disclose a difference about the use of the dictionary when
no real difference about the use of the policeman is involved. Curiously
enough, people who are most sensible about the need for planning other
social amenities in a reasonable way are often slow to see the need for
creating a rational and international language.
The technique of measurement and counting has followed the caravans
and galleys of the great trade routes. It has developed very slowly. At
least four thousand years intervened between the time when men could
calculate when the next eclipse would occur and the time when men
 MATH E MATICS , TH E M I RROR OF CIVI LIZATION 21

could calculate how much iron is present in the sun. Between the first
recorded observations of electricity produced by friction and the
measurement of the attraction of an electrified body two thousand years
intervened. Perhaps a longer period separates the knowledge of magnetic
iron (or lodestone) and the measurement of magnetic force. Classifying
things according to size has been a much harder task than recognizing
the different sorts of things there are. It has been more closely related to
man’s social achievements than to his biological equipment. Our eyes
and ears can recognize different sorts of things at a great distance. To
measure things at a distance, man has had to make new sense organs for
himself, like the astrolabe, the telescope, and the microphone. He has
made scales which reveal differences of weight to which our hands are
quite insensitive. At each stage in the evolution of the tools of measurement
man has refined the tools of size language. As human inventiveness has
turned from the counting of flocks and seasons to the building of
temples, from the building of temples to the steering of ships into chartless
seas, from seafaring plunder to machines driven by the forces of dead
matter, new languages of size have sprung up in succession. Civilizations
have risen and fallen. At each stage a more primitive, less sophisticated
culture breaks through the barriers of custom thought, brings fresh rules
to the grammar of measurement, bearing within itself the limitation of
further growth and the inevitability that it will be superseded in its turn.
The history of mathematics is the mirror of civilization.
The beginnings of a size language are to be found in the priestly
civilizations of Egypt and Sumeria. From these ancient civilizations we
see the first-fruits of secular knowledge radiated along the inland trade
routes to China and pushing out into and beyond the Mediterranean,
where the Semitic peoples are sending forth ships to trade in tin and dyes.
The more primitive northern invaders of Greece and Asia Minor collect
and absorb the secrets of the pyramid makers in cities where a priestly
caste is not yet established. As the Greeks become prosperous, geometry
becomes a plaything. Greek thought itself becomes corrupted with the star
worship of the ancient world. At the very point when it seems almost
inevitable that geometry will make way for a new language, it ceases to
develop further. The scene shifts to Alexandria, the greatest centre of
shipping and the mechanical arts in the ancient world. Men are thinking
about how much of the world remains to be explored. Geometry is applied
to the measurement of the heavens. Trigonometry takes its place. The size
of the earth, the distance of the sun and moon are measured. The star
gods are degraded. In the intellectual life of Alexandria, the factory
22 Lancelot Hogben

of world religions, the old syncretism has lost its credibility. It may still
welcome a god beyond the sky. It is losing faith in the gods within the
sky.
In Alexandria, where the new language of star measurement has its
beginnings, men are thinking about numbers unimaginably large
compared with the numbers which the Greek intellect could grasp.
Anaxagoras had shocked the court of Pericles by declaring that the sun
was as immense as the mainland of Greece. Now Greece itself had sunk
into insignificance beside the world of which Eratosthenes and
Poseidonius had measured the circumference. The world itself sank into
insignificance beside the sun as Aristarchus had measured it. Ere the
dark night of monkish superstition engulfed the great cosmopolis of
antiquity, men were groping for new means of calculation. The bars of
the counting frame had become the bars of a cage in which the intellectual
life of Alexandria was imprisoned. Men like Diophantus and Theon
were using geometrical diagrams to devise crude recipes for calculation.
They had almost invented the third new language of algebra. That they
did not succeed was the nemesis of the social culture they inherited. In
the East the Hindus had started from a much lower level. Without the
incubus of an old-established vocabulary of number, they had fashioned
new symbols which lent themselves to simple calculation without
mechanical aids. The Moslem civilization which swept across the
southern domain of the Roman Empire brought together the technique
of measurement, as it had evolved in the hands of the Greeks and the
Alexandrians, adding the new instrument for handling numbers which
was developed through the invention of the Hindu number symbols. In
the hands of Arabic mathematicians like Omar Khayya-m, the main
features of a language of calculation took shape. We still call it by the
Arabic name, algebra. We owe algebra and the pattern of modern
European poetry to a non-Aryan people who would be excluded from
the vote in the Union of South Africa.
Along the trade routes this new arithmetic is brought into Europe by
Jewish scholars from the Moorish universities of Spain and by gentile
merchants trading with the Levant, some of them patronized by nobles
whose outlook had been unintentionally broadened by the Crusades.
Europe stands on the threshold of the great navigations. Seafarers are
carrying Jewish astronomers who can use the star almanacs which Arab
scholarship had prepared. The merchants are becoming rich. More than
ever the world is thinking in large numbers. The new arithmetic or
“algorithm” sponsors an amazing device which was prompted by the need
 MATH E MATICS , TH E M I RROR OF CIVI LIZATION 23

for more accurate tables of star measurement for use in seafaring.

Logarithms were among the cultural first-fruits of the great navigations.
Mathematicians are thinking in maps, in latitude and longitude. A new
kind of geometry (what we call graphs in everyday speech) was an
inevitable consequence. This new geometry of Descartes contains
something which Greek geometry had left out. In the leisurely world of
antiquity there were no clocks. In the bustling world of the great
navigations mechanical clocks are displacing the ancient ceremonial
function of the priesthood as timekeepers. A geometry which could
represent time and a religion in which there were no saints’ days are
emerging from the same social context. From this geometry of time a
group of men who were studying the mechanics of the pendulum-clock
and making fresh discoveries about the motion of the planets devise a
new size language to measure motion. To-day we call it “the” calculus.
For the present this crude outline of the history of mathematics as a
mirror of civilization, interlocking with man’s common culture, his
inventions, his economic arrangements, his religious beliefs, may be left
at the stage which had been reached when Newton died. What has
happened since has been largely the filling of gaps, the sharpening of
instruments already devised. Here and there are indications of a new
sort of mathematics. We see a hint of it in social statistics and the study
of the atom. We begin to see possibilities of new languages of size
transcending those we now use, as the calculus of movement gathered
into itself all that had gone before.

The foregoing consists of Chapter I

from Hogben’s MATHE MATICS FOR TH E MILLION.
 Andrew Russell Forsyth
1858–1942

E very now and then a mathematician is called upon to justify his

craft to nonmathematicians. The occasion may be an address
delivered before some learned body (learned in other fields), or it
may be an informal after-dinner conversation. In either case the
usual approach is to show how useful mathematics is. Too often,
however, this consists essentially in pointing out that everyone needs
to do sums at some time in his life. It remains for the gifted teacher
to try to define what he considers to be the mathematical way of
thinking, and to describe precisely the nature of the relationship
between mathematics and the other sciences. Forsyth was such a
teacher.
Andrew Russell Forsyth, Scottish mathematician, was born in
Glasgow in 1858. After studying at University College in Liverpool
and at Trinity College in Cambridge, he became a professor of
mathematics, lecturing at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at the
Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. He was a
creative mathematician in the field of pure mathematics, and wrote
widely on the subject of differential equations. In addition to his
own contributions to mathematics, Forsyth stimulated interest in
the work of other mathematicians. He died in 1942.

M athematics, in Life and Thought, delivered as a lecture in 1928, is

an example of Forsyth’s ability to excite interest in a subject usually
regarded with either awe or dislike. Much of it is devoted to a
description of the mental processes which led Newton from the
observation of the falling apple to the theory of universal gravitation.
Though such a description in nonmathematical terms requires
considerable simplification, it is an interesting account of the facts then
24
 A. R. Forsyth 25

available to Newton, and the puzzles that he had to solve in order

to arrive at his theory. In placing Newton’s work in its historical
context as the culmination of investigations by Copernicus, Galileo,
and Kepler, and followed by radical modifications by Einstein,
Forsyth illustrates the nonstatic nature of scientific theory. The last
word is never said.
After mentioning the many areas in which mathematics serves in
the market place, Forsyth makes a special plea for mathematics as a
pure science. In many cases scientific theories can come into being
only because the forms in which they can be expressed have been
created by mathematicians years or even centuries before anyone
foresaw their possible usefulness.
 Mathematics, in Life
and Thought

here is an ancient adage, certainly as old as the naturalist Pliny,

who perished in the famous eruption of Vesuvius, that “a shoemaker
should not look above his last.” The wisdom of the adage is always being
ignored. The newspapers give evidence of the neglect in their daily
spate of ingenuous letters. Every publishing season adds to the evidence
by the recurring deluge of new books which seem no nearer an end now
than they were in the days of the troubled preacher who, like many
another student, found much study a weariness of the flesh. The neglect
is not unknown even in the range of occasional lecturers of the strictest
academic credentials. Physicists, whose main concern has been with the
inanimate matter of the universe, have been heard to pontificate on the
origins of life and its continuity after death. Men of science will discourse
on philosophy with no more success and no more clarity than are achieved
by Beatrice in Dante’s Divina Commedia. Philosophers, in all the precision
of metaphysics, will enunciate canons for the progress of observational
science. Nay, theologians have been known to formulate fundamental
principles which, as being the eternal verities, are the unchanging limits
of scientific attainment. Even the citizen in the bus will settle the policy
of a nation, though his knowledge of an issue at stake could be written
on a picture postcard, leaving plenty of space for the picture. So let me,
very respectfully, for once be the obedient shoemaker of the adage, not
look above my last, and offer you a sample of my own wares.
The subject of mathematics, to some aspects of which my lecture will
invite your attention, is regarded variously: sometimes with respect, rising
through awe to wonder; sometimes with dislike, degenerating through
repulsion to hatred. Occasionally it is regarded as a key, even as the
guide, to trustworthy knowledge; sometimes as the dismal process of

26
 MATH E MATICS , I N LI FE AN D THOUG HT 27

calculations to be performed by hired computers. In any event, why take

it as the matter of a lecture? For there are at least two diverging views as
to the nature of such a performance. One view is that the lecture should
give a tabloid summary of what is hidden in books that are not read: yet,
in the case of my choice, who wants a summary of what seems the
infinitely arid and the absolutely incomprehensible, as so obviously
appears whenever a mathematical book is opened? Another view is that
the lecture should give what is not to be found in any of the books, so
that the exposition of novelties shall induce, in a sympathetic listener,
the frame of mind that is willing to acquire fuller knowledge through
patient labour. On this view the listener must indeed be sympathetic,
very willing to provide the patient labour for the acquisition of
mathematical knowledge: for he will find, as Euclid told a bored and
discontented pupil in words that have lived for more than two thousand
years, “There is no royal road to learning.”
My purpose differs from both of these implied aims. It is to invite you
to note one or two of the uses, some simple, some recondite, of
mathematics, and, by noting them, to attempt an appreciation of the
issues which are forced into daily discussion and daily action.

For the ordinary course of affairs a great English divine declared that
“probability is the very guide of life.” Usually certainty is lacking: and
probability can be taken as the only reasonable guide amid an occasional
maze of possibilities. Yet, when sifted and analysed, this probability often
reduces itself to a more or less mathematical (chiefly, I fear, less
mathematical) measure of moral and material advantages to follow. The
spirit of mathematics, if not its method, dominates the sifting analysis:
we can sometimes regret that the method is lacking. Let me offer a couple
of illustrations.
Some of you may remember a legend of wide circulation in 1914
before the Great War was many weeks old: how a force of 80,000 Russians
had been landed in the north of England, transported from the north-east
coast to Portsmouth, and thence shipped to France. The moral support of
those Russians was a comforting belief at the moment. There had been
days, only a human generation earlier, when everything Russian had been
anathema to patriotic Englishmen: but those days were past. Though we
might be martially arrogant enough to feel that we did not need the help,
it still was good to think that we had it: so comforting that the news was
accepted without question. Retired military men in clubs, an unfailing
source of trustworthy wisdom, were supposed to know it: the unverified
28 A. R. Forsyth

gossip of the smoking-room gathered confidence in statement as it spread:

the good news was believed. I was staying on the Dorsetshire coast at
the time: and during a week-end a visitor brought information from a
London club that the stationmaster at Dorchester had seen the Russians
pass through his station in the train. My mathematical scepticism was
roused: my informant, by successive queries mildly posed, was induced
to estimate the number of men in a compartment, the number of
compartments in a carriage, the number of carriages in a train even in a
period of emergency, and the consequent number of trains needed to
convey the said 80,000 Russians. When, on the basis of his own estimates,
he informed me (correctly) that over one hundred trains would be
required for the transport, I asked him whether the Dorchester
stationmaster had seen over one hundred trains pass through his station.
His answer was blank silence: for him, as for me, the Russians vanished
into thin air—a little salutary arithmetic had dissipated a hopelessly false
legend that was fostering false confidence. Probability had not been the
guide of my informant’s judgment.
I suppose that, in Swansea as in other communities, considerable
industry is devoted by eager optimists to competitions anticipating the
results of football matches. Newspapers (all of them prudent enough to
insure against loss in the venture) vie with one another in offering large
sums of money for merely filling up slips of paper: in those slips entries
are to be made estimating the result for each one of a dozen matches, a
win, or a draw, or a loss, for a specified side. To the person who anticipates
all the twelve results correctly, a large sum of money is paid. So the
competitors, eager for wealth but niggardly in constructive labour, spend
long periods in hatching their prophetic guesses. It is not a game: it is
not a business; it is a gamble. I sometimes wonder whether the competitors
have the faintest idea of the minuteness of the chance of individual
success in the competition, if it can be dignified by such a title. There
are more than four thousand different ways of getting every guess wrong;
there are more ways of getting eight guesses wrong and the other four
right than there are of getting any other distribution; there are more
than half a million ways of having one or more errors in the selection:
there is only one way of getting them all right. Need I say more? To this
fatuous occupation, Bishop Butler might have hesitated before declaring
probability to be the very guide of life.

Let us pass to consider matters somewhat more serious and more

precise.
 MATH E MATICS , I N LI FE AN D THOUG HT 29

A copious definition of mathematics can be given by describing it as

the craft of counting as in the arithmetic of daily life, as the craft of
measuring as in the original needs of surveying and engineering, as the
craft of observing and noting as in the early days of astronomy. When
the simple processes of counting, of measuring, and of recording
observations are pursued systematically, it is found that the repetition of
some particular issue requires the particular Repetition of some
unchanging and appropriate process—a rule is evolved: the rules aggregate
into a science. Moreover, there arises the necessity for some discrimination
between the nebulous inspiration of a guess, which in our graver moods
we call an “idea,” and the comparative certainty of a systematic inference,
which those graver moods dignify with the title of a “theory.” As a mere
fact, speculations and ideas may be almost as old as the hills: laborious
methods can lead to a theory which, new to-day, may be discarded or be
confirmed tomorrow in the light of fuller knowledge.
Again let me offer a couple of illustrations, more academic than
imaginary Russians or a gambling quest for an unearned increment.
One shall be from astronomy, the other from the structure of matter or
(as the old Latin poet Lucretius styled it) the nature of things.
Systematic astronomy had its establishment in observations as accurate
as time and patience and simple instruments would allow. A marvellous
collection of facts, relating to such abstruse phenomena as the sequence
of eclipses of the sun and of the moon, was made by the ancient Chaldeans.
Later the Greeks, whose passion for geometry was almost a rule of life,
began to describe the heavens geometrically as they saw and we see the
heavens. The natural, the almost inevitable, consequence was that,
because the Greek observers described accurately what they saw, they
made the earth the centre of the universe. (Here let me say that these old
Greek descriptions remain as accurate as man could make them: where
we part company from the Greeks is in the assumption, obvious but
untrue, that the phenomena require the earth to be the centre of all
things.) Yet nearly three centuries before the Christian era the Greek
philosopher, Aristarchus of Samos, was an early astronomical heretic—
he groped towards a heliocentric theory of the universe: with him it was
a speculation, an idea, based upon an inference that the sun is seven
times as large as the earth, at a time when there was little knowledge of
the size of the earth and less of the size of the sun. His speculation
remained in the region of fancy: the traditional trust in Aristotle
maintained the acceptance of the old geocentric theory; there were
not enough facts to achieve the tragedy of killing a theory. In their
30 A. R. Forsyth

turn the theologians of the West, conservative as are all orders of

organized priesthood, made the geocentric theory an article of orthodox
faith: and for centuries the universe, thus theocratic in matters outside
religion and faith, could be described only in the vocabulary of the
schoolmen in theology. A Catholic monk, Copernicus, opened the path
to a change of estimate, though the innocent dedication of his book to
the Pope saved his name from contumely: had he lived, it might not
have saved him from the fate of Galilei. Gradually, almost painfully,
methods systematized from facts killed the old theory: and the inspired
guess of Aristarchus passed from the range of happy surmise into a
knowledge of the solar system of which even the most exuberant
imagination had not dared to dream.
My second illustration is taken from a more speculative range of
thought—more speculative because less openly amenable to observation
and to experiment. Many of you doubtless are familiar with the recent
predominance of the word “atom” in scientific discussions. There was a
time, even now easily recalled, when the use of the word was an implicit
declaration that finality had been attained: human knowledge could not
penetrate the indivisible. In the interval, a school of mathematical
physicists has devoted itself to the study of the atom: its apostles have
concluded that, mathematically, an atom is a universe in itself, a sort of
solar system with recurrent revolutions of its members that can be subjected
to calculation. Different atoms, in present speculation, are different
universes which, under the compulsion of electric bombardment, may
lose some of their constituents and, in doing so, become a changed universe.
But mark the history. The atom was the irresoluble element by which
Democritus, four centuries before the Christian era, explained the
phenomena of matter to one of the most critical nations of thinkers the
world has known: the atom became the explanation of animate, as well as
of inanimate, nature. The culmination of that ancient theory came in the
doctrine of Epicurus; and its fine exposition by Lucretius is nearly two
thousand years old. In varying forms, with changing adaptations, it was
tried, was found wanting, was driven from pillar to post, until it seemed
to have reached a secure haven in chemistry. Where is the atomic theory
now? Thirty years ago chemists were shocked by the resolution of the
atom, the absolutely irresoluble element; now the more elusive electron
has taken the field. The scientific world is in pursuit of the electron:
Sir Ernest Rutherford is battering the atom by an electric attack under
staggering voltage; and the negative electrons thus violently expelled
from the domain of the positive nucleus are realizing the speculative
 MATH E MATICS , I N LI FE AN D THOUG HT 31

guess made, centuries ago, by Hipparchus, that atoms could lose portions
of themselves and thereby change their essence. Sir Joseph Thomson, the
brilliant master of Rutherford, goes further than his pupil and suggests that
the electron itself is a universe, perhaps another mathematical solar system;
and only two short months ago the distinguished son of Sir Joseph Thomson
was able, as the result of investigations, to compare the size of the electron
and that of the atom, neither of which has been seen by man. Physical
speculation is outrunning its mathematics: but, as so often before, the
return to mathematics is ever made as soon as there are facts amenable to
calculation. The facts remain, and the calculations based on the facts
remain. Theories spring up and flourish while they conform to the facts
and the calculations: they wilt, when new facts come that demand
requirements which the theories cannot supply. It resembles the historic
cult in the Arician grove: an old theory of yesterday is forsaken for a
new one of to-day, itself to be forsaken to-morrow, like
The priest who slew the slayer
And shall himself be slain.

What part does the science of mathematics play in all this scientific
tornado? And, indeed, what does the science include, and what may it
claim to achieve? Broadly speaking, as soon as any progressive subject
attains a stage where its phenomena admit of some kind of measurement,
then and there the science of calculation can begin to deal with the
measurements: thereafter the subject can be assisted by mathematics.
Calculations can predict some results that must ensue from combinations
of facts, and so can render some experiments superfluous. Calculations
can even anticipate experiment and observation: such has been the case
with Hamilton’s conical refraction in optics and with the electric waves
which first emerged from the mathematical labours of Maxwell and Hertz.
Calculations can utilize facts in nonexperimental fashion and produce
results that lay concealed. But no calculation can produce results that
do not belong to the range of the subject-matter: thus astrology, and
alchemy, and necromancy, bound to be scientific failures, were and are
successful frauds owing to the undying gullibility of human nature in
its wistful yearning for the unknown and the unattainable.
Briefly, the science of mathematics cannot be a substitute for essential
experiment: but it can show how experiments and observations, duly
systematized, can be elucidated so as to discriminate between what is
principle and what is detailed consequence of principle. Sometimes it
can lead, though its guidance is unrecognized, to simple devices which
32 A. R. Forsyth

economize labour to an extent almost beyond credibility. Thus some of

you know the slide-rule by practice; many of you will know it by name;
but I am not sure that every student, or even every professor, would be
prepared to furnish a reasoned statement justifying the various processes
for which that admirable instrument is used. Yet it can be regarded as a
compendium of logarithms, without tables and without any necessity
for calculation: and logarithms are but a means of turning abstruse
multiplication into simple addition and abstruse division into simple
subtraction. Again, your Russian peasant usually is illiterate: but he
will make out his invoice for wool, or furs, or timber, or corn and rye, as
accurately as your western clerk by surprisingly simple means that mark
a limit of his attainments. He can multiply by the number two, but no
other number; he can divide by the number two, but by no other number;
and he can perform simple addition. By these three operations he effects
all that he needs for business transactions, and he effects it accurately.
But he could not give you one word of explanation of a process which
to him has become a habit; and if you explained the mathematical
argument that justifies his action, he could not understand one word of
the explanation. Does his process strike you as wonderful? It is no more
wonderful, it is less wonderful, than the process employed by the smallest
shopkeeper. Your Welsh shopkeeper calculates in what mathematicians
call the scale of four for farthings, in the scale of twelve for pence, in the
scale of twenty for shillings; he adds and he multiplies in the scale of
ten. But he knows nothing of numerical scales; and probably he would
not understand a word of reasoned explanation of such scales. The Russian
peasant actually calculates, in essence though not in obvious form, in
the scale of two: and some kind though unknown genius, in a dim and
distant past, has turned the simple mathematics of the scale of two into
the Russian peasant’s process of arithmetic.

And if such is the fact in simple matters, you need not be surprised if
the science of mathematics is used to high economic purpose where, at
some stage, its calculations are obtrusively significant. Another couple
of examples will justify such a statement.
At the present time, parts of the country are soon to be covered with a
vast network of wires, stretching from pier to pier, for the transmission of
electric power from central stations to relatively remote places where the
power cannot be generated and cannot otherwise be obtained or concentrated.
All sorts of complicated questions of an engineering kind arise, as
fundamental in their way as questions connected with the construction of
 MATH E MATICS , I N LI FE AN D THOUG HT 33

a liner to cross the Atlantic or a bridge to span the Ganges: questions of

stress, of strain, of strength to face unknown but imaginable conditions
which may become grimly real; and the answers are the results of
mathematical calculations. These calculations are made in an office, but
they do not remain in the office: they are utilized to indicate critical
tests and to adapt given possibilities for the making of those tests in a
variety of external conditions. Not until all the tests are satisfied would
the engineers be justified in proceeding to their work: and engineers
know, and can imagine, better than all others concerned, how much
superfluous labour has been saved by the mathematical calculations.
There were days when the telegraph, overhead or submarine, was at
once a new toy and a new mystery. Once the springs of action were known,
their doings were regularized by instruments devised on a mathematical
basis. Systematic processes were thus possible: their mathematical basis
was worked out by Lord Kelvin (then Professor William Thomson)
especially for submarine cables; and through his double genius for
mathematics and for engineering applications of mathematics, the
telegraph took its place in the routine of daily life. Now it is so ordinary,
almost so stale and so old-fashioned, as to seem on the verge of
supersession. For you are surrounded by wireless telegraphy at every
turn; the beginnings of telephotography are being made whereby you
may see in your evening paper a transmitted photograph of some event
occurring only a few hours earlier perhaps some thousands of miles
away. Does it ever occur to jaded satisfaction to inquire how so much
has come into ordinary life which even in our grandfathers’ age would
have been declared impossible or fanciful? The story is not long, though
the labour has been multitudinous.
Probably any historian of modern electrical science would be prepared
to acknowledge Faraday’s researches as the beginning of a new epoch.
Great as was his genius, and valuable as were those researches, Faraday
left them largely as a treasury of rich results, fundamental in bearing,
capable of ordered development from their experimental stage and wisely
formulated laws, but still undeveloped. Then another genius with another
bent, Maxwell the mathematician, regarded the quantitative results
obtained by Faraday as the material for systematic mathematical analysis;
and the monument of his life is his ordered mathematical exposition of
a new mathematical theory of electricity and magnetism founded on
the Faraday results. But, as so often has been the fact in the movements
of human knowledge, when once the accurate scientific observations
received their systematic treatment by mathematics, interesting possibil-
34 A. R. Forsyth

ities were revealed that hitherto had not even been surmised; and one
immediate consequence of Maxwell’s work was his creation of an electro-
magnetic theory of light, through the identification of a relation between
certain electrical constants and the speed of the transmission of light.
The notion of waves and vibrations now entered boldly into the
discussion. Another mathematical genius, Hertz, developed the
consequences of the Maxwell theory and, by his calculations, obtained
inferences in advance of observed results. The constructive genius of
engineers—Marconi is a typical and outstanding example—was fired to
new efforts in practical application. Soon there was the initial sending of
messages through space (call it the ether, if you choose, but do not suppose
that a name implies knowledge) from one land to another, from land to
ocean and ocean to land: last Sunday’s armistice service in Trafalgar
Square in London was heard in New Zealand. Let me leave you in the
middle of sounds, which may come from a studio near at hand or a
continental orchestra perhaps in Rome or Madrid: and in all your surprise
and happiness do not entirely forget that, throughout the development,
the science of mathematics has played, is playing, and will continue to
play, its significant part in every endeavour. Electrical engineering is
not wholly electrical, in practice or in theory: its successes are achieved
not solely through its machinery, however elaborate. Behind all its
progress, as part of the reasoning mind of it all, there labours the science
of mathematics as an angel of human thought.

Perhaps it is in astronomy that the most picturesque instances of the

use of mathematics have occurred. You all have read of the fall of an
apple in a Norfolk garden: how that fall made Newton ponder: and how
the scribes (sparing us details perhaps not always known to them) tell us
that Newton thence discovered the theory of gravitation. Will you be
indulgent if, with only a fragment of calculation and confessedly for an
ulterior purpose, I attempt to give you an outline of the process of thought
which led to that theory?
Without going back to the beginnings of dynamical science, it will be
sufficient to recall one of the experimental observations of Galilei, now
almost commonplace enough to be ignored; then novel enough to startle
old conceptions, ultimately to destroy some dogmas of theological (I
do not say religious) belief, and to recast human ideas of the cosmic
universe. He inferred that a dropped stone fell straight down, that is,
towards the centre of the earth, because the descent, wherever tried, is
always straight down. He also inferred that, in its movement, the stone fell
 MATH E MATICS , I N LI FE AN D THOUG HT 35

four times as far in the first two seconds as it did in the first, nine times
as far in the first three seconds as it did in the first: and so on for the
succession of seconds from the beginning: the distance fallen in any
number of seconds is measured by the result of taking that number and
multiplying it by itself, “squaring it,” as we mathematicians call the
calculation. But this only gives a comparative measure among different
periods: something more is wanted in order to state what we popularly
call an exact measure. Such a statement demands a knowledge of the
exact distance that the stone would fall in a specified time; for example,
the exact distance the stone would fall in five seconds from the beginning
of its movement. He had noted observations also which answered the
demand: the result of calculations (always there is calculation) showed
that there is a number, very slightly larger than sixteen (but let me call it
sixteen for brevity of statement), which is of crucial importance. Return
now to the measure of the distance through which the stone falls. We
saw that the distance is, first of all, measured by a number which is the
square of the number of seconds (the number of seconds multiplied by
itself ). We take that square number, which gives the first and the sort of
relative estimate of the fall, and we multiply that square number by the
crucial number sixteen, no matter what the square number may have
been. The product—what a schoolboy calls the “answer”—is the exact
distance through which the stone has fallen in the specified time, when
the distance is measured in English feet. Thus in three seconds the
distance would be 144 ft.: for the square of three (that is, three multiplied
by three) is 9, and the result of multiplying 9 by the crucial number 16
is 144. In five seconds the fall would be 400 ft.: for the square of five
(that is, five multiplied by five) is 25, and the result of multiplying 25 by
the crucial number 16 is 400. And so on. Let me ask you to remember
that the fall of the stone is measured by the square of the number of
seconds in the duration of the fall: above all, to remember that there is a
crucial number sixteen.
Now an explanation of the movements of the planets was being attained,
though very gradually. The Copernican opinion, that they moved round
the sun as a fixed body, was making its way, because the more it was
tested the more continually did it accord with facts. The observations
of Tycho Brahe had been reduced to systematic results by the industry
of Kepler, who found that planets move almost in circles, actually in
oval curves (mathematicians call them ellipses), with the sun in the
supreme position at the focus: and these ovals differ from circles only
very slightly. But that discovery of Kepler’s was only descriptive,
36 A. R. Forsyth

corresponding to the description of a stone as falling straight down: it

was no sort of measure of the movement of a planet. Such a measure
came, once more, from Kepler’s labours: he established two great
inferences, laws as they are called. One law was concerned with the
constant rate of speed round the sun, as measured by the area swept out
by an imagined line drawn from the sun to the planet, thus giving one
sort of measure. The other law was concerned with a relation between
the size of the oval described by the planet round the sun, and the time
which the planet required to effect one complete revolution round the
sun: thus giving a second sort of measure. Knowledge had passed out of
the describing stage into the measuring stage.
The genius of Newton comes upon the scene. According to the
chronicles in summary, he saw an apple fall: it made him think of the
moon; and thought led him to the theory of universal gravitation. Perhaps
the sequence of ideas, a falling apple, a steady moon, and an abstract
theory, does not seem very coherent; and it sounds like an extract from
Alice in Wonderland to be told that the abstract theory can account for the
fall of the apple and the steadiness of the moon. Yet it is true, and the
explanation comes in this wise.

The Galilei stone and the Newton apple both fall straight down, that
is, to the centre of the earth, supposed to be a globe: that qualitative
result happens wherever the fall takes place; it is reasonable to suppose
that the fall is due to the earth. There had been another discovery of
Galilei’s which, at first, had shocked even intellectual belief: stones of
different weights and kinds and sizes fall through the same height in
the same time; and so it is reasonable to suppose that, in the fall of a
stone, the earth is the principal agent, perhaps the only agent, that leads
to the fall of any stone anywhere through any height. It is true that the
distances which can actually be observed for falling stones are ludicrously
small compared with the size of the earth; and the crucial number seems
to be a lonely fact, unrelated to anything except a falling stone,
unexplained, so far inexplicable. But everything connected with the
observation and with the calculations remains unaffected if a hypothesis
be propounded under which the earth attracts the stone and is the sole
cause of its fall: and there is no other observation, reserved in a
background, to render that hypothesis open to objection.
Next, the moon goes round the earth steadily: so far as that movement
is concerned, the moon can be declared (always descriptively, and with
sufficient accuracy) to move round the earth in a circle with a steady
 MATH E MATICS , I N LI FE AN D THOUG HT 37

speed. But the stone falls straight to the earth, always with an increasing
speed; the moon moves round the earth, always with a steady speed;
what earthly connection can there be between the two movements? It is
here that the hypothetical attracting faculty of the earth enters, through
another discovery which had been made by Galilei and formulated
precisely by Newton. Under this law a movable body, if subjected to no
influence of any kind, and if it moves at all, will only move in a straight
line, and only at an unchanging speed in that line; and variation from
the straightness of path, or variation of speed even in a straight path, can
be effected only by outside influence. Our falling stone moves in a
straight path downwards, but with an ever-gathering speed; this change
of speed is due to some influence: all falling stones make in a direction
towards the very centre of the earth; can the influence, affecting the speed,
be due to the earth attracting the stone down to itself? Our moon does not
move in a straight line; the deviation from straightness must be due to
some influence; we must, for the moment, leave the uniform speed out of
count, for the law makes no declaration concerning uniform speed not
along a straight line. Can this influence upon the moon be due to the
earth for ever attracting the moon out of the straight line which would be
an uninfluenced path, drawing the moon to itself, with just enough
influence to keep it at a steadily unchanging distance from itself? On the
hypothesis of an attracting quality in the earth, the said quality must
explain the deviation of the moon from a straight path, while it can
explain the changing speed of the falling stone. The hypothesis must be
tested; it is not to be declared true because it has not been disproved.
Critical tests are ready in the observed facts and in the inferences
from the facts. But how are the facts to be used? Simply and solely by
the application of mathematics, never constructed in this direction by
any man before Newton, now the possession of any reasonably capable
mathematical undergraduate.
Remember that we have the crucial number, sixteen, for Galilei’s falling
stone: let us now pay some attention to the moon. As the moon moves
steadily in a circle round the earth, in a period of 29 1 2 days roughly,
and as the distance of the moon from the earth otherwise is known to be
approximately sixty times the radius of the earth, the steady speed of the
moon in her circle is easily calculated: the inferred estimate will, of
course, be based upon the estimated size of the radius of the earth. An
entirely different calculation gives our estimate of the pull to be exercised
upon the moon, to drag her regularly and always into the circle away from
the straight line which would be her path if there were no influence. Had
38 A. R. Forsyth

there been no influence she would have gone along a straight line, for
ever moving away from the earth farther and farther: as things are, she
remains at a steady distance that on the average remains unchanged.
Consequently the difference, say at the end of one second, between her
actual distance from the earth and what would have been her distance
had she moved along a straight line, is the distance through which,
during that second, the supposed effective influence would have pulled
her. That distance is a measure of the influence: but how is the influence
to be estimated?
The estimate manifestly cannot come in the same way as for the falling
stone. For the stone, only a few hundred feet at the utmost came to
account. The moon is 240,000 miles away from the earth and remains at
that distance. An assumption that the measure of the attracting influence
of the earth is the same for all stones falling upon its surface causes no
mental hesitation: the few hundred feet, which are the utmost traversed
by a stone, are such a triviality in magnitude compared with the four-
thousand-mile radius of the earth that there is no real opportunity for
modification of the influence of the earth. But what is to be the
assumption made for an attracted moon, if it is attracted? In thought we
have to go far to reach the moon: we may as well be bold, go out boldly
in thought into the vast space of the solar system, and use the knowledge
provided by the Kepler laws which, be it noted, are not hypotheses but
are the systematic expression of observed facts.
An easy mathematical calculation indicates the character of the
supposed terrestrial influence which does no more than keep the moon
going round in a circle at an unchanging distance, but does not bring
the moon any nearer as it brings a stone nearer. This calculation uses
the Kepler law establishing the relation between the size of a planetary
path and the time of revolution along the whole path, and the result of
the calculation is to show that the attracting influence of the earth, if it
is to be the controlling cause of the movement, must decrease as the
square of the number which represents the distance of the attracted body
from the centre of the earth. The distance of the moon from the earth is,
roughly, sixty times the radius of the earth; and the square of the number
60 is 3,600. Therefore, according to the result of the calculation, the
attracting influence of the earth at the distant moon is only one 3,600th
part of its attracting influence upon a stone falling at its surface.
Now we know that the earth’s influence is the same for all falling stones
and, ultimately, is measured by the crucial number sixteen. We want to
know whether the earth’s attracting influence, if any, upon the moon can
 MATH E MATICS , I N LI FE AN D THOUG HT 39

be the same in kind as upon the falling stone, while, of course, its
magnitude will be diminished in proper proportion owing to the difference
in distance. Let us denote the crucial number, connected solely with the
attracting power of the earth, by the symbol x, so dear to mathematicians.
For a falling stone at the surface of the earth this number x is known to be
sixteen. If our hypothesis, that the earth’s attracting influence is the sole
cause dominating the movement of the moon, can be justified, the number
at the distance of the moon would be 1 3600 x, just as x is sixteen at the
surface of the earth. We therefore have to calculate this number 1 3600 x for
the moon, in the same way as 16 is the calculated number for the stone.
When it has been found for the moon, we at once have the value of x by a
simple operation; and this value of x is as crucial for the moon’s motion
under our hypothesis as is the number 16 for the falling stone. If this crucial
number x for the moon is inferred from the calculation to be the same as the
crucial number 16 for the falling stone, the hypothesis concerning the
attracting influence of the earth is so far justified. If it is not, the moon sails
on, serenely unexplained. The crucial number for the moon must be found.
Here, Newton was at the crisis of his investigation. He had his facts:
there were the established laws, expressing accumulations of
observations: there were the old measurements in the accepted units,
the foot as the precise unit for distance in the case of the falling stone, the
radius of the earth to be expressed in miles as a less precise unit in
estimating the distance of the moon. Newton was now to test his theory
in the furnace of fact. Everything depended upon the crucial number x:
would it come out, for the moon, the same as it was for the stone, the
critical sixteen?
When this crucial number x first emerged from Newton’s calculations
about the moon, it turned out to amount to something very slightly less
than fourteen—let us call it fourteen, as approximately as the critical
sixteen. Certainly the x had been found to be the number sixteen for the
stone, which was as surely sixteen as human observation could make it.
The theory was not established as a working hypothesis. Unless unknown
and apparently undiscoverable errors had crept in, of such a kind as to
vitiate the calculation, the theory could not be maintained. Something
must be wrong somewhere: hardly imaginable in the facts or in the data;
perhaps—a reluctant perhaps—in the assumption that the earth was the
attracting influence upon the stone and the moon. At that stage there was
nothing to be done by a mind and a temperament such as were Newton’s:
he kept silence, consigned his soul not to perdition but to patience, and
proceeded to ponder over other riddles of the physical universe.
40 A. R. Forsyth

Now what is the secret of the situation? It is implied in what has

already been said, as though it were a clue in a crossword puzzle. The
calculations involved, through the moon’s distance, an estimate of the
radius of the earth in miles; and in Newton’s day the mile, a geographical
or nautical mile, was the sixtieth part of a degree. The calculations
involved, through the distances traversed by the stone, the adoption of
the foot as the unit. The two different units of length had to be brought
into relation. We, of course, take 5,280 feet as equivalent to a mile; so
did Newton. But that mile of 5,280 feet is not a geographical mile, the
sixtieth part of a degree of latitude; the geographical mile survives solely
in one usage, the maritime knot of 6,080 feet, and Newton did not know
the fact. A correct estimate had, it is true, been published some thirty years
earlier by a London schoolmaster based upon his own observations
during a holiday tramp from London to York; but in the Stuart days of
the first Charles, England was more concerned with political turmoil
than with a pedagogue’s estimate of a mile, and the schoolmaster’s
contribution to knowledge remained unnoticed and unknown.
Some thirteen years passed in silence for Newton. In 1679 a friend
told him of a recent French research in geodesy which gave a corrected
estimate of the length of a degree of latitude: still, of course, the sixty
geographical miles, but a little over sixty-nine of the customary civic
miles of 5,280 feet. Thus one datum in Newton’s calculation had been
wrong: he had used a wrong number, 60, instead of a right number, 69.
In the light of this new knowledge Newton returned to his old
calculations: the use of the more accurate measure of the radius of the
earth brought out the crucial number x for the moon to be in exact and
complete agreement with the crucial number 16 for a falling stone. His
hypothesis concerning the attracting influence of the earth was verified.
It became a trustworthy working hypothesis which, in due course of its
development, though then he knew it not, was to achieve a revolution
in thought as regards the human knowledge of the physical cosmos.
But his mathematical triumph was only the beginning of new
mathematical work. Suddenly there loomed before him a portentous
difficulty. All his calculations had treated the moon, the earth, the sun, as
points—points which, in Euclid’s definition familiar to Newton, had no
parts and no magnitude: an earth of no magnitude; a sun of no magnitude;
truly portentous assumptions! To Newton’s mind a fresh difficulty was
only a fresh problem to be solved: and, here, he made another mathematical
discovery which was of supreme importance for his theory. The moon,
the earth, the sun, the planets, all of them round bodies, are very nearly
 MATH E MATICS , I N LI FE AN D THOUG HT 41

spherical in shape; and Newton’s fresh discovery was that the complete
attraction of a sphere on an outside body was the same, in all respects, as
if the whole of the matter were condensed at the centre. In fact, his
mathematics showed that he could regard the moon, the earth, the sun,
as attracting points. The difficulty disappeared: the theory could stand.
Now he could go forward, to test the theory further by further extension:
the result was his theory of universal gravitation according to which
every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle
according to a definite law: the attraction was measured by dividing one
fixed number by a number which represented the square of the distance
between the attracting particles. He worked out the theory in detail,
under this law; the calculated results everywhere agreed with the observed
phenomena; and the result was the publication, in 1687, of his Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy, one of the great books of the world. It was
an achievement made through mathematics by a mathematician. It has
been confirmed and amplified since Newton’s day by generations of
mathematicians of all the ages and all climes: by means of it, and still
using their mathematics, they have made predictions that are daily
verified in the movement of the planets; they have predicted the return
of comets, they discovered a new planet, and, passing from fact as
commonplace as the creation of the Nautical Almanac to the shadowy
realms of high speculation, they measure the bounds of the universe,
assign a limit in the past to its evolution from chaos, nay, they will even
assign a limit to its future—a very remote limit, happily for our sense of
ease—when it may subside into an exhausted extinction. Personally, I
prefer fact to speculation.

Behind my account of the emergence of the theory of universal

gravitation, there stands a purpose of warning rather than edification.
Often in recent years you will have heard the name of Einstein: the
journals and newspapers appeared to palpitate with excitement over his
discovery, which was very real and of real importance: but there always
was, and there remains, a grave dearth of comprehensible explanation as
to the gist of his discovery. The writers found the word relativity: it
used to bear a philosophical significance mainly connected with a doctrine
that existence and observation are not independent of the living and
observing mind. The association with the physical universe was rather
nebulous in explanation: that mattered little; was not Einstein’s important
(but dimly understood) discovery connected with relativity? So, imitating
the image-makers at Ephesus in the days of the apostle Paul, the expositors
42 A. R. Forsyth

proclaimed that “Great is relativity.” Here are the facts, so far as they are
concerned with the theory of gravitation.
That theory of gravitation was found to embrace all astronomical
observations. By the assumption of that theory as a working basis, Halley
in 1706 had predicted the periodic return of a particular comet: it duly
verified the prediction in 1758, in 1835, in 1910; and its next coming is
due only fifty-eight years hence. By the assumption of that theory Adams
and Leverrier, independently, through a vast mathematical calculation
applied to some seeming irregularities of the planet Uranus, discovered
the existence of a still more distant planet Neptune, never observed before
the discovery made in their studies. The mathematical genius of Laplace
had set the phenomena of the astronomical heavens in mathematical
order. Everything was settled into its place, or almost everything. There
remained one or two minute somethings. When the most elaborate
calculations had been completed, there remained a little unexplained
fluctuation in the movement of the moon, so often accused of fickleness
by the poets; and one planet, fitly named after Mercury, the not
overrighteous messenger of the gods in classical mythology, was found
to be acting in a manner inconsistent with strict mathematical propriety.
The vagaries of Mercury were very slight: its orbit is far more tilted than
that of any other planet, and is more swiftly traversed than that of any
other planet; but the vagaries could not be explained by tilt or speed, and
their source (that is, the cause of the difference between what is actually
seen and what calculation led astronomers to expect) could not be
discovered. The irregularities made no difference to daily life: they made
no other difference to astronomical life: but there they were. Nature would
not change so as to conform to man’s explanation, so man’s explanation
must be examined in order to be brought into conformity with nature.
The accuracy of the calculations could not humanly be challenged, for
they obeyed every test that human reason could devise. Perhaps there was
something, an extremely tiny something somewhere (for, remember, the
deviations are extremely slight), something wrong in the fundamental
assumptions upon which the calculations were based. And here is an
illustration of the difference between practice and thought: “to stop that
nonsense” an engineer would have driven a rivet, would have inserted a
guiding slot, would have added a tightening chain round the dome of
St. Paul’s. But rivets and slots and chains are devastations in thought, not
remedies: so the fundamental assumptions must be revised. It had been
assumed that the solar system is fixed, absolutely fixed, in the universe: is
that dogma true? Even if it is not true, the alternative of a wandering solar
 MATH E MATICS , I N LI FE AN D THOUG HT 43

system would hardly explain the minute domestic vagaries of one rather
insignificant member. It had been assumed that the measurement of the
same thing, in varying circumstances and at diverse times, made as
accurate as human skill can achieve, and corrected for every incidental
error that human skill can detect, is always the same, whatever be the
time and the place of the thing measured and the measurement made.
The dogma seems an obvious inference from what we are pleased to call
common sense: like so many obvious things, it cannot be proved and it
cannot be submitted to adequate test: in fact, common sense continues
to call it obvious. But how if it be not true? Your standard of
measurement, used to measure a magnitude in passing time and on a
moving body, would change in the same way (if at all) as the measured
magnitude, and you could not detect the change, if there be change:
and, in that case, your measures would no longer be absolute: they
would be relative, perhaps to time, perhaps to place or change of place,
perhaps to the way of change. Nothing remains absolute: yet that was a
fundamental assumption, stated explicitly, in the Newtonian philosophy.
Now this notion of relativity is not new: it did not come into scientific
thought with Einstein: it was not unknown to Newton himself: and
men have pondered over it often in the last fifty years. But there is the
customary difficulty: an idea may come into the range of thought: how
can it be garbed in expression, for discussion, for calculation? You will
remember the wisdom of a character in George Eliot’s Theophrastus Such,
“There’s some as thinks one thing: there’s some as thinks another thing:
but my opinion’s different.” Men, charging themselves with the
formulation of relativity, have devised various modes of its mathematical
expression; and, so far as concerns astronomy, there is not the unanimity
of expression which, if there, would be a rudimentary recommendation.
It was the work of Einstein which was the first to explain—or, at any
rate, to account for—the behaviour of Mercury: and therefore it is to
Einstein that the glory rightly accrues. The method of Einstein, however,
is not the sole one that gives an explanation; for the mathematical methods
of other men have also led to that result, after Einstein. But neither the
method of Einstein nor the method of any other mathematician has yet
succeeded in explaining the slight caprice of the moon.
How far the popular expositors had made themselves acquainted with
the investigations in all accessible issues, before some of them tried to
make our flesh creep with their pronouncement upon the passing of
gravitation, might be the curious quest of some doubting scientific
Thomas Didymus. But of one thing we may be reasonably sure: neither in
44 A. R. Forsyth

that theory, nor in any other living theory, has the last word been said.
For the last words of all are the epitaph on a tomb: and the Newtonian
theory is still alive sufficiently to provide man with a working hypothesis
of the natural universe in which he lives.

Before I close, there are two inferences which I would appeal to you
not to draw from my lecture. It is not the fact that the services of
mathematics are restricted to the subjects that have been selected for
mention or illustration. It is not the fact that the science of mathematics
exists or thrives, solely or mainly in order to find or to further applications
in other sciences.
The range of human activities, within which mathematics and the ideas
of mathematics are called upon or are utilized for service, is so vast and so
varied that I can do no more, at this stage, than mention the names of
some of the regions where the science of mathematics is active. Enough
has been said on the score of astronomy. In engineering of every type,
ranging from the ancient ship of the sea to the modern ship of the air, in
your buildings, in your bridges, in your tunnels, its help is indispensable.
Is it an occupation so sedate as book-keeping, say by double entry? That
process is but an iterated application of the use of the plus and minus
signs of algebra, though the book-keeper is not usually aware of the fact.
Is it a science so relatively modern as physical chemistry? Much of that
science is based upon the mathematical expression of some of the laws of
change in physical nature. Is it a science which apparently is so far remote
from the usual conception of mathematics as is physiology, the science of
the processes of living organisms? That human science is examining the
phenomena of the activities of such organisms, is expressing
quantitatively those activities, is dealing mathematically with those
quantitative expressions: there are the researches on the expenditure of
muscular energy, the researches on industrial fatigue. Did not a sectional
president startle the British Association the other day by hinting (though
without adequate justification) that a distinguished physiologist, trained
as a mathematician and using his knowledge, was on the verge of
discovering the mystery of life itself? Is it the spotting of invisible guns
on a far-flung battlefield? My friend and former colleague, your worthy
professor of mathematics in this College, could tell you of the combined
efforts of mathematicians and physicists who, by means of instruments and
calculations connected with the properties of sound, were able to devise
means of approximate location. And those same properties were used, in
connection with mathematical instruments constructed for the purpose, to
 MATH E MATICS , I N LI FE AN D THOUG HT 45

detect, from the surface of the sea, not merely the fact, but the direction of
approach, of a hostile submarine. The citations of utility could be continued
almost without limit: only one other subject will be indicated. If there is
anything that appeals to the average inhabitant of these islands and is a
frequent topic of unfruitful conversation, it is the weather: and a feature
of our morning newspaper is the forecast issued by the Meteorological
Office. But the occupants of that office are not like the ancient soothsayers,
waiting for inspiration from gifts tendered and from sacrifices rendered.
They collect scattered information, co-ordinate that information by
settled mathematical processes, draw their mathematical diagrams to
represent that co-ordinated information, and, inferring tendencies from
movements indicated by their diagrams, issue their calculated forecast.
All these—there are more that crowd into the mind—may be an adequate
recital showing how essential and how extensive is the service rendered
by the rather silent science of mathematics to the practical life of mankind.

Most of all, I would not wish to have you possessed by the notion that
the pursuit of mathematics by human thought must be justified by its
utility for practical uses in life. Such a justification would, it is true,
require the inclusion of mathematics in the scheme of any university
where technical studies are deemed important; and in the growing
prosperity of your University College, the more generously you open
your technical courses to mathematics, even in their utilitarian aspect,
the more will the professional students ultimately benefit. But having
paid tribute to the demands of the market-place, let me speak for
mathematics as a pure science of progressive knowledge, worthy to
claim the devotion of the finest intellects to its pursuit, worthy to
challenge the respect of man towards the world of learning. One of the
high ideals of mankind through all the ages, and in all civilizations,
has inspired the search for more knowledge wherever it can be found
or be attained. Ever since man has attempted to acquire ordered
knowledge, the science that deals with number and deals with form
has been pursued for its own sake because, thereby, the human spirit
can find unending satisfaction and unending occupation. And the
creations of mathematical science have been the glory of the nations.
We may recall the lost dominion of Babylon, we may think of her
hanging gardens as, in their time, a wonder of the world; we may sigh
over her pomp and her luxury, gone like a dream in the visions of the
night; but the contributions of her Chaldean priests to astronomy
survive to this day. Greece has an immortal name from her art, from her
46 A. R. Forsyth

literature, from her philosophy: her rival schools of Plato and of Aristotle
still dominate the Western world; but her fame is no less immortal by
her bequest of geometry and of number, two of the purest theories ever
devised by the human mind. We may hold Semitic science in low regard:
but Arabic learning kept science alive when the rest of the intellectual
world was torpid; it created algebra as the marvellous extension of the
Greek arithmetic, and gave us the very digits we use and the scale of
ten, so familiar to us as to seem part of our existence: we can pay our
mental homage of remembrance to those ancient Arabs in southern Spain.
What the modern peoples have thus inherited they have amplified beyond
recognition; and the nations of the West—France, Germany, Italy, America
across the ocean, our own people—have lived in an unending life-giving
rivalry in the creation of mathematical knowledge, sought for its own
sake, its domain as boundless as human thought itself.
For there is progress still in mathematical science; there will always be
progress of increasing knowledge in a world that is not dead. Results
have been achieved by the noble army of great spirits of the past, and
their achievements are the possession of the living. But those very
achievements are the stimulus to the living that they, in their turn, shall
endeavour to advance knowledge. And this pursuit is to be made by the
living spirits for the sake of new knowledge, not for the sake of new
glory, not for the sake of new benefit. If utility should come, well and
good: but we need trouble no more about immediate utility as an aim
than the Greeks troubled about the utility of their conic sections or
Newton troubled about the utility of the gravitation theory. So here,
amid this community in a centre of commercial activity, in this home of
high learning which has been established for the betterment of men and
women as human citizens, let me plead, if pleading be needed, for the
highest consideration to be given to the pursuit of pure knowledge as
well as technical training, not neglecting mathematics, once called the
Queen of the Sciences. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and the spirit
of knowledge does not follow the quest for wealth and power; but the
creation of new knowledge makes for the high repute of a nation, alike
in the days when its influence is dominant and in the more distant days
when its doings shall have been recorded on the scroll of time.
 Alfred North Whitehead
1861–1947

A lfred North Whitehead, one of the most outstanding

philosophers of recent times, was born in Ramsgate, England, in
1861. He was the son of the Reverend Alfred W. Whitehead, who
was then headmaster of a private school. The educational and
religious atmosphere of his home, the participation of his family in
community affairs, and the surrounding countryside, rich in historical
relics, all exerted a permanent influence on the younger Whitehead.
He had a deep sense of the past, and a secure feeling of being at
home in the world.
In 1880 Whitehead entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where
he remained as student and Fellow until 1910. Then, for thirteen
years, he was at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in
Kensington. In 1924, rather than accept retirement because of old
age, he moved to America and became professor of philosophy at
Harvard. It was there that he was able to give the fullest expression
to his own philosophy. He once remarked: “From twenty on I was
interested in philosophy, religion, logic and history. Harvard gave
me a chance to express myself.” During this time he wrote Science
and the Modern World, Process and Reality, and Adventures in Ideas. He
was senior member of Harvard’s Society of Fellows until his death
in 1947.
The first phase of Whitehead’s intellectual development was
devoted to logic and mathematics. During this period, he wrote A
Treatise on Universal Algebra and, together with Bertrand Russell,
Principia Mathematica. This second work, which undertakes to
establish the logical foundations of mathematics, has been called
one of the greatest contributions to logic since Aristotle. The Principia,
like that of Isaac Newton, set the fashion for decades to come, so
that research in symbolic language became a major branch of
47
48 Alfred North Whitehead

mathematics. This program of “logicalizing” all of mathematics took

ten years and ran into three volumes. The patience of investigation
required is illustrated by the fact that the proof of the proposition
1 + 1 = 2, which appears as Theorem 110.643, is not given until
page 83 of the second volume.
In his second phase of development, Whitehead turned to the
philosophy of science. He wrote Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Natural Knowledge, The Concept of Nature, The Principles of Relativity, and
Introduction to Mathematics, a classic popularization of the subject. The
following selection, “On Mathematical Method,” is taken from this
last work. Here Whitehead examines the fundamental ideas that
form the foundations of mathematics rather than the technical
processes by which problems are actually solved.

W hitehead once said: “It is a profoundly erroneous truism,

repeated by copybooks and by eminent people when they are making
speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we
are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances
by extending the number of important operations which we can
perform without thinking about them.” In mathematics, “not thinking
of what we are doing” is, Whitehead points out, the essence of
abstraction, the importance of which lies in the fact that it is only by
abstracting that we can form ideas of the universe.
Whitehead illustrates how abstraction leads to new ways of
thinking, so that facts and relationships hitherto unknown come to
light. The invention of variables, possible only after the invention
of algebra, led to the formulation of laws about things that change.
With the concept of variability, and using the method of abstraction,
Newton was able to establish the law of gravity.
Whitehead defends the unworldly quality of mathematical
inquiry, saying that “the really profound changes in human life all
have their ultimate origin in knowledge pursued for its own sake.”

Notes from the artist: “Strong contrasts were used in the portrait
of Whitehead. . . . Bold blacks and open whites frame the picture,
while within it calculations from his Principia Mathematica—
twisted into semiabstract forms—dance above the head of Whitehead,
who is seen in an attitude of quiet concentration.”
50 Alfred North Whitehead

Abstract theorizing led Faraday to important discoveries in electricity.

It took practical ability to develop the modern uses of electricity, but,
to Whitehead, a world dominated by practical men is symbolized in
the fate of Archimedes as told by Plutarch.
On the Nature of a Calculus examines the way in which tools for
abstracting are forged. Such a tool is called a calculus. It is the art of
manipulating signs according to certain fixed rules. Arithmetic is a
calculus; so are algebra and trigonometry. The branch of
mathematics invented by Newton and Leibniz was considered so
important that it was called the calculus.
The most significant thing about these tools is that after they have
been invented they seem to lead a life of their own. A mathematician
often feels that he is in the position of simply watching them to see
what they will do. If we can imagine one set of tools making another
set of tools, we have a picture of the growth of mathematics. “Device
is piled upon device,” says Whitehead. But he rejects the idea that
mathematics can become completely divorced from the world of
things. A calculus may consist of symbols that stand for other
symbols, but, if it is not to be frivolous, it must ultimately refer to
some reality.
The rarefied atmosphere of Abstract Thought is not an outer
space reserved for professional mathematicians. If you have learned
to add two and five without asking “Two and five what?” you already
have both feet off the ground—higher than you think. You are now
air-borne. The rest is just a matter of gaining altitude.
 On Mathematical Method
from An Introduction to Mathematics

TH E ABSTRACT NATURE
OF MATHEMATICS

he study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.

The important applications of the science, the theoretical interest of its
ideas, and the logical rigour of its methods, all generate the expectation
of a speedy introduction to processes of interest. We are told that by its
aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water
are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, this great science
eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it—“ ’Tis here, ’tis
there, ’tis gone”—and what we do see does not suggest the same excuse
for illusiveness as sufficed for the ghost, that it is too noble for our gross
methods. “A show of violence,” if ever excusable, may surely be “offered”
to the trivial results which occupy the pages of some elementary
mathematical treatises.
The reason for this failure of the science to live up to its reputation is
that its fundamental ideas are not explained to the student disentangled
from the technical procedure which has been invented to facilitate their
exact presentation in particular instances. Accordingly, the unfortunate
learner finds himself struggling to acquire a knowledge of a mass of
details which are not illuminated by any general conception. Without a
doubt, technical facility is a first requisite for valuable mental activity:
we shall fail to appreciate the rhythm of Milton, or the passion of Shelley,
so long as we find it necessary to spell the words and are not quite
certain of the forms of the individual letters. In this sense there is no
royal road to learning. But it is equally an error to confine attention to
technical processes, excluding consideration of general ideas. Here lies
the road to pedantry.

51
52 Alfred North Whitehead

The object of the following chapters is not to teach mathematics, but

to enable students from the very beginning of their course to know what
the science is about, and why it is necessarily the foundation of exact
thought as applied to natural phenomena. All allusion in what follows
to detailed deductions in any part of the science will be inserted merely
for the purpose of example, and care will be taken to make the general
argument comprehensible, even if here and there some technical process
or symbol which the reader does not understand is cited for the purpose
of illustration.
The first acquaintance which most people have with mathematics is
through arithmetic. That two and two make four is usually taken as the
type of a simple mathematical proposition which everyone will have
heard of. Arithmetic, therefore, will be a good subject to consider in
order to discover, if possible, the most obvious characteristic of the science.
Now, the first noticeable fact about arithmetic is that it applies to
everything, to tastes and to sounds, to apples and to angels, to the ideas
of the mind and to the bones of the body. The nature of the things is
perfectly indifferent, of all things it is true that two and two make four.
Thus we write down as the leading characteristic of mathematics that it
deals with properties and ideas which are applicable to things just because
they are things, and apart from any particular feelings, or emotions, or
sensations, in any way connected with them. This is what is meant by
calling mathematics an abstract science.
The result which we have reached deserves attention. It is natural to
think that an abstract science cannot be of much importance in the affairs
of human life, because it has omitted from its consideration everything
of real interest. It will be remembered that Swift, in his description of
Gulliver’s voyage to Laputa, is of two minds on this point. He describes
the mathematicians of that country as silly and useless dreamers, whose
attention has to be awakened by flappers. Also, the mathematical tailor
measures his height by a quadrant, and deduces his other dimensions by
a rule and compasses, producing a suit of very ill-fitting clothes. On the
other hand, the mathematicians of Laputa, by their marvellous invention
of the magnetic island floating in the air, ruled the country and
maintained their ascendancy over their subjects. Swift, indeed, lived at
a time peculiarly unsuited for gibes at contemporary mathematicians.
Newton’s Principia had just been written, one of the great forces which
have transformed the modern world. Swift might just as well have laughed
at an earthquake.
But a mere list of the achievements of mathematics is an unsatisfactory
 ON MATH E MATICAL M ETHOD 53

way of arriving at an idea of its importance. It is worth-while to spend a

little thought in getting at the root reason why mathematics, because of
its very abstractness, must always remain one of the most important topics
for thought. Let us try to make clear to ourselves why explanations of
the order of events necessarily tend to become mathematical.
Consider how all events are interconnected. When we see the
lightning, we listen for the thunder; when we hear the wind, we look
for the waves on the sea; in the chill autumn, the leaves fall. Everywhere
order reigns, so that when some circumstances have been noted we can
foresee that others will also be present. The progress of science consists
in observing these interconnections and in showing with a patient
ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of
a few general connections or relations called laws. To see what is general
in what is particular and what is permanent in what is transitory is the
aim of scientific thought. In the eye of science, the fall of an apple, the
motion of a planet round a sun, and the clinging of the atmosphere to
the earth are all seen as examples of the law of gravity. This possibility
of disentangling the most complex evanescent circumstances into various
examples of permanent laws is the controlling idea of modern thought.
Now let us think of the sort of laws which we want in order completely
to realize this scientific ideal. Our knowledge of the particular facts of the
world around us is gained from our sensations. We see, and hear, and
taste, and smell, and feel hot and cold, and push, and rub, and ache, and
tingle. These are just our own personal sensations: my toothache cannot
be your toothache, and my sight cannot be your sight. But we ascribe the
origin of these sensations to relations between the things which form the
external world. Thus the dentist extracts not the toothache but the tooth.
And not only so, we also endeavour to imagine the world as one connected
set of things which underlies all the perceptions of all people. There is not
one world of things for my sensations and another for yours, but one
world in which we both exist. It is the same tooth both for dentist and
patient. Also we hear and we touch the same world as we see.
It is easy, therefore, to understand that we want to describe the
connections between these external things in some way which does not
depend on any particular sensations, nor even on all the sensations of
any particular person. The laws satisfied by the course of events in the
world of external things are to be described, if possible, in a neutral
universal fashion, the same for blind men as for deaf men, and the same
for beings with faculties beyond our ken as for normal human beings.
But when we have put aside our immediate sensations, the most serv-
54 Alfred North Whitehead

iceable part—from its clearness, definiteness, and universality—of what

is left is composed of our general ideas of the abstract formal properties
of things; in fact, the abstract mathematical ideas mentioned above. Thus
it comes about that, step by step, and not realizing the full meaning of
the process, mankind has been led to search for a mathematical description
of the properties of the universe, because in this way only can a general
idea of the course of events be formed, freed from reference to particular
persons or to particular types of sensation. For example, it might be
asked at dinner: “What was it which underlay my sensation of sight,
yours of touch, and his of taste and smell?” the answer being “an apple.”
But in its final analysis, science seeks to describe an apple in terms of
the positions and motions of molecules, a description which ignores me
and you and him, and also ignores sight and touch and taste and smell.
Thus mathematical ideas, because they are abstract, supply just what is
wanted for a scientific description of the course of events.
This point has usually been misunderstood, from being thought of in
too narrow a way. Pythagoras had a glimpse of it when he proclaimed
that number was the source of all things. In modern times the belief that
the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian
mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science as it grows
towards perfection becomes mathematical in its ideas.

VARIABLE S

Mathematics as a science commenced when first someone, probably a

Greek, proved propositions about any things or about some things, without
specification of definite particular things. These propositions were first
enunciated by the Greeks for geometry; and, accordingly, geometry was
the great Greek mathematical science. After the rise of geometry centuries
passed away before algebra made a really effective start, despite some
faint anticipations by the later Greek mathematicians.
The ideas of any and of some are introduced into algebra by the use of
letters, instead of the definite numbers of arithmetic. Thus, instead of saying
that 2 + 3 = 3 + 2, in algebra we generalize and say that, if x and y stand for
any two numbers, then x + y = y + x. Again, in the place of saying that
3 > 2, we generalize and say that if x be any number there exists some
number (or numbers) y such that y > x. We may remark in passing that this
latter assumption—for when put in its strict ultimate form it is an
assumption—is of vital importance, both to philosophy and to mathe-
matics; for by it the notion of infinity is introduced. Perhaps it required
 ON MATH E MATICAL M ETHOD 55

the introduction of the arabic numerals, by which the use of letters as

standing for definite numbers has been completely discarded in
mathematics, in order to suggest to mathematicians the technical
convenience of the use of letters for the ideas of any number and some
number. The Romans would have stated the number of the year in which
this is written in the form MDCCCCX, whereas we write it 1910, thus
leaving the letters for the other usage. But this is merely a speculation.
After the rise of algebra the differential calculus was invented by Newton
and Leibniz, and then a pause in the progress of the philosophy of
mathematical thought occurred so far as these notions are concerned;
and it was not till within the last few years that it has been realized how
fundamental any and some are to the very nature of mathematics, with
the result of opening out still further subjects for mathematical exploration.
Let us now make some simple algebraic statements, with the object of
understanding exactly how these fundamental ideas occur.
(1) For any number x, x + 2 = 2 + x;
(2) For some number x, x + 2 = 3;
(3) For some number x, x + 2 > 3.
The first point to notice is the possibilities contained in the meaning
of some, as here used. Since x + 2 = 2 + x for any number x, it is true for
some number x. Thus, as here used, any implies some and some does not
exclude any. Again, in the second example, there is, in fact, only one
number x, such as x + 2 = 3, namely only the number 1. Thus the some
may be that one number only. But in the third example, any number x
which is greater than 1 gives x + 2 > 3. Hence there are an infinite
number of numbers which answer to the some number in this case. Thus
some may be anything between any and one only, including both these
limiting cases.
It is natural to supersede the statements (2) and (3) by the questions:
(2´) For what number x is x + 2 = 3;
(3´) For what numbers x is x + 2 > 3.
Considering (2´), x + 2 = 3 is an equation, and it is easy to see that its
solution is x = 3 – 2 = 1. When we have asked the question implied in
the statement of the equation x + 2 = 3, x is called the unknown. The object
of the solution of the equation is the determination of the unknown.
Equations are of great importance in mathematics, and it seems as though
(2´) exemplified a much more thoroughgoing and fundamental idea than
the original statement (2). This, however, is a complete mistake. The idea
56 Alfred North Whitehead

of the undetermined “variable” as occurring in the use of “some” or

“any” is the really important one in mathematics; that of the “unknown”
in an equation, which is to be solved as quickly as possible, is only of
subordinate use, though of course it is very important. One of the causes
of the apparent triviality of much of elementary algebra is the
preoccupation of the text-books with the solution of equations. The same
remark applies to the solution of the inequality (3´) as compared to the
original statement (3).
But the majority of interesting formulae, especially when the idea of
some is present, involve more than one variable. For example, the
consideration of the pairs of numbers x and y (fractional or integral)
which satisfy x + y = 1 involves the idea of two correlated variables, x and
y. When two variables are present the same two main types of statement
occur. For example, (1) for any pair of numbers, x and y, x + y = y + x, and
(2) for some pairs of numbers, x and y, x + y = 1.
The second type of statement invites consideration of the aggregate of
pairs of numbers which are bound together by some fixed relation—in
the case given, by the relation x + y = 1. One use of formulae of the first
type, true for any pair of numbers, is that by them formulae of the second
type can be thrown into an indefinite number of equivalent forms. For
example, the relation x + y = 1 is equivalent to the relations
y + x = 1, (x – y) + 2y = 1, 6x + 6y = 6,
and so on. Thus a skilful mathematician uses that equivalent form of the
relation under consideration which is most convenient for his immediate
purpose.
It is not in general true that, when a pair of terms satisfy some fixed
relation, if one of the terms is given the other is also definitely determined.
For example, when x and y satisfy y2 = x, if x = 4, y can be ± 2, thus, for
any positive value of x there are alternative values for y. Also in the
relation x + y > 1, when either x or y is given, an indefinite number of
values remain open for the other.
Again there is another important point to be noticed. If we restrict
ourselves to positive numbers, integral or fractional, in considering the
relation x + y = 1, then, if either x or y be greater than 1, there is no positive
number which the other can assume so as to satisfy the relation. Thus
the “field” of the relation for x is restricted to numbers less than 1, and
similarly for the “field” open to y. Again, consider integral numbers only,
positive or negative, and take the relation y2 = x, satisfied by pairs of such
numbers. Then whatever integral value is given to y, x can assume one cor-
 ON MATH E MATICAL M ETHOD 57

responding integral value. So the “field” for y is unrestricted among

these positive or negative integers. But the “field” for x is restricted in
two ways. In the first place x must be positive, and in the second place,
since y is to be integral, x must be a perfect square. Accordingly, the
“field” of x is restricted to the set of integers 12, 22, 32, 42, and so on, i.e.,
to 1, 4, 9, 16, and so on.
The study of the general properties of a relation between pairs of
numbers is much facilitated by the use of a diagram constructed as follows:

Fig. 1

Draw two lines OX and OY at right angles; let any number x be

represented by x units (in any scale) of length along OX, any number y
by y units (in any scale) of length along OY. Thus if OM, along OX, be x
units in length, and ON, along OY, be y units in length, by completing
the parallelogram OMPN we find a point P which corresponds to the
pair of numbers x and y. To each point there corresponds one pair of
numbers, and to each pair of numbers there corresponds one point. The
pair of numbers are called the co-ordinates of the point. Then the points
whose co-ordinates satisfy some fixed relation can be indicated in a
convenient way, by drawing a line, if they all lie on a line, or by shading
an area if they are all points in the area. If the relation can be represented
by an equation such as x + y = 1, or y2 = x, then the points lie on a line,
which is straight in the former case and curved in the latter. For example,
considering only positive numbers, the points whose co-ordinates satisfy
x + y = 1 lie on the straight line AB in Fig. 1, where OA = 1 and OB = 1.
Thus this segment of the straight line AB gives a pictorial representation
of the properties of the relation under the restriction to positive numbers.
Another example of a relation between two variables is afforded by
considering the variations in the pressure and volume of a given mass of
some gaseous substance—such as air or coal-gas or steam—at a constant
58 Alfred North Whitehead

temperature. Let
be the number of cubic feet in its volume and p its
pressure in lb. weight per square inch. Then the law, known as Boyle’s
law, expressing the relation between p and
as both vary, is that the
product p
is constant, always supposing that the temperature does not
alter. Let us suppose, for example, that the quantity of the gas and its
other circumstances are such that we can put p
= 1 (the exact number
on the right-hand side of the equation makes no essential difference).

Fig. 2

Then in Fig. 2 we take two lines, OV and OP, at right angles and draw
OM along OV to represent
units of volume, and ON along OP to represent
p units of pressure. Then the point Q, which is found by completing the
parallelogram OMQN, represents the state of the gas when its volume is

cubic feet and its pressure is p lb. weight per square inch. If the
circumstances of the portion of gas considered are such that p
= 1, then
all these points Q which correspond to any possible state of this portion
of gas must lie on the curved line ABC, which includes all points for
which p and
are positive, and p
= 1. Thus this curved line gives a
pictorial representation of the relation holding between the volume and
the pressure. When the pressure is very big the corresponding point Q
must be near C, or even beyond C on the undrawn part of the curve; then
the volume will be very small. When the volume is big Q will be near to
A, or beyond A; and then the pressure will be small. Notice that an engineer
or a physicist may want to know the particular pressure corresponding to
some definitely assigned volume. Then we have the case of determin-
ing the unknown p when
is a known number. But this is only in particular
cases. In considering generally the properties of the gas and how it
will behave, he has to have in his mind the general form of the whole
 ON MATH E MATICAL M ETHOD 59

curve ABC and its general properties. In other words the really
fundamental idea is that of the pair of variables satisfying the relation
p  = 1. This example illustrates how the idea of variables is fundamental,
both in the applications as well as in the theory of mathematics.

METHODS OF APPLICATION

The way in which the idea of variables satisfying a relation occurs in

the applications of mathematics is worth thought, and by devoting some
time to it we shall clear up our thoughts on the whole subject.
Let us start with the simplest of examples: Suppose that building costs
1s. per cubic foot and that 20s. make £1. Then in all the complex
circumstances which attend the building of a new house, amid all the
various sensations and emotions of the owner, the architect, the builder,
the workmen, and the onlookers as the house has grown to completion,
this fixed correlation is by the law assumed to hold between the cubic
content and the cost to the owner, namely that if x be the number of cubic
feet, and £y the cost, then 20y = x. This correlation of x and y is assumed
to be true for the building of any house by any owner. Also, the volume of
the house and the cost are not supposed to have been perceived or
apprehended by any particular sensation or faculty, or by any particular
man. They are stated in an abstract general way, with complete indifference
to the owner’s state of mind when he has to pay the bill.
Now think a bit further as to what all this means. The building of a
house is a complicated set of circumstances. It is impossible to begin to
apply the law, or to test it, unless amid the general course of events it is
possible to recognize a definite set of occurrences as forming a particular
instance of the building of a house. In short, we must know a house
when we see it, and must recognize the events which belong to its
building. Then amidst these events, thus isolated in idea from the rest
of nature, the two elements of the cost and cubic content must be
determinable; and when they are both determined, if the law be true,
they satisfy the general formula
20y = x.
But is the law true? Anyone who has had much to do with building will
know that we have here put the cost rather high. It is only for an expensive
type of house that it will work out at this price. This brings out
another point which must be made clear. While we are making mathe-
matical calculations connected with the formula 20y = x, it is indifferent
60 Alfred North Whitehead

to us whether the law be true or false. In fact, the very meanings assigned
to x and y, as being a number of cubic feet and a number of pounds
sterling, are indifferent. During the mathematical investigation we are, in
fact, merely considering the properties of this correlation between a pair
of variable numbers x and y. Our results will apply equally well, if we
interpret y to mean a number of fishermen and x the number of fish caught,
so that the assumed law is that on the average each fisherman catches
twenty fish. The mathematical certainty of the investigation only attaches
to the results considered as giving properties of the correlation 20y = x
between the variable pair of numbers x and y. There is no mathematical
certainty whatever about the cost of the actual building of any house. The
law is not quite true and the result it gives will not be quite accurate. In
fact, it may well be hopelessly wrong.
Now all this no doubt seems very obvious. But in truth with more
complicated instances there is no more common error than to assume
that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have
been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely
certain. The conclusion of no argument can be more certain than the
assumptions from which it starts. All mathematical calculations about
the course of nature must start from some assumed law of nature, such,
for instance, as the assumed law of the cost of building stated above.
Accordingly, however accurately we have calculated that some event
must occur, the doubt always remains—Is the law true? If the law states a
precise result, almost certainly it is not precisely accurate; and thus even
at the best the result, precisely as calculated, is not likely to occur. But
then we have no faculty capable of observation with ideal precision, so,
after all, our inaccurate laws may be good enough.
We will now turn to an actual case, that of Newton and the law of gravity.
This law states that any two bodies attract one another with a force
proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional
to the square of the distance between them. Thus if m and M are the masses
of the two bodies, reckoned in lbs. say, and d miles is the distance
between them, the force on either body, due to the attraction of the
other and directed towards it, is proportional to ; thus this force can
be written as equal to , where k is a definite number depending on
the absolute magnitude of this attraction and also on the scale by which
we choose to measure forces. It is easy to see that, if we wish to reckon in
 ON MATH E MATICAL M ETHOD 61

terms of forces such as the weight of a mass of 1 lb., the number which
k represents must be extremely small; for when m and M and d are each
put equal to 1, becomes the gravitational attraction of two equal
masses of 1 lb. at the distance of one mile, and this is quite inappreciable.
However, we have now got our formula for the force of attraction. If
we call this force F, it is , giving the correlation between the
variables F, m, M, and d. We all know the story of how it was found out.
Newton, it states, was sitting in an orchard and watched the fall of an
apple, and then the law of universal gravitation burst upon his mind.
It may be that the final formulation of the law occurred to him in an
orchard, as well as elsewhere—and he must have been somewhere. But
for our purposes it is more instructive to dwell upon the vast amount
of preparatory thought, the product of many minds and many centuries,
which was necessary before this exact law could be formulated. In the
first place, the mathematical habit of mind and the mathematical
procedure explained in the previous two chapters had to be generated;
otherwise Newton could never have thought of a formula representing
the force between any two masses at any distance. Again, what are the
meanings of the terms employed, Force, Mass, Distance? Take the easiest
of these terms, Distance. It seems very obvious to us to conceive all
material things as forming a definite geometrical whole, such that the
distances of the various parts are measurable in terms of some unit
length, such as a mile or a yard. This is almost the first aspect of a
material structure which occurs to us. It is the gradual outcome of the
study of geometry and of the theory of measurement. Even now, in
certain cases, other modes of thought are convenient. In a mountainous
country distances are often reckoned in hours. But leaving distance,
the other terms, Force and Mass, are much more obscure. The exact
comprehension of the ideas which Newton meant to convey by these
words was of slow growth, and, indeed, Newton himself was the first
man who had thoroughly mastered the true general principles of
Dynamics.
Throughout the middle ages, under the influence of Aristotle, the
science was entirely misconceived. Newton had the advantage of coming
after a series of great men, notably Galileo, in Italy, who in the previous
two centuries had reconstructed the science and had invented the right
way of thinking about it. He completed their work. Then, finally, having
the ideas of force, mass, and distance, clear and distinct in his mind, and
62 Alfred North Whitehead

realizing their importance and their relevance to the fall of an apple and
the motions of the planets, he hit upon the law of gravitation and proved
it to be the formula always satisfied in these various motions.
The vital point in the application of mathematical formulae is to have
clear ideas and a correct estimate of their relevance to the phenomena
under observation. No less than ourselves, our remote ancestors were
impressed with the importance of natural phenomena and with the
desirability of taking energetic measures to regulate the sequence of events.
Under the influence of irrelevant ideas they executed elaborate religious
ceremonies to aid the birth of the new moon, and performed sacrifices to
save the sun during the crisis of an eclipse. There is no reason to believe
that they were more stupid than we are. But at that epoch there had not
been opportunity for the slow accumulation of clear and relevant ideas.
The sort of way in which physical sciences grow into a form capable of
treatment by mathematical methods is illustrated by the history of the gradual
growth of the science of electro-magnetism. Thunderstorms are events on a
grand scale, arousing terror in men and even animals. From the earliest
times they must have been objects of wild and fantastic hypotheses, though
it may be doubted whether our modern scientific discoveries in connection
with electricity are not more astonishing than any of the magical explanations
of savages. The Greeks knew that amber (Greek, electron) when rubbed
would attract light and dry bodies. In A.D. 1600, Dr. Gilbert, of Colchester,
published the first work on the subject in which any scientific method is
followed. He made a list of substances possessing properties similar to those
of amber; he must also have the credit of connecting, however vaguely,
electric and magnetic phenomena. At the end of the seventeenth and
throughout the eighteenth century knowledge advanced. Electrical machines
were made, sparks were obtained from them; and the Leyden jar was
invented, by which these effects could be intensified. Some organized
knowledge was being obtained; but still no relevant mathematical ideas had
been found out. Franklin, in the year 1752, sent a kite into the clouds and
proved that thunderstorms were electrical.
Meanwhile from the earliest epoch (2634 B.C.) the Chinese had utilized
the characteristic property of the compass needle, but do not seem to
have connected it with any theoretical ideas. The really profound
changes in human life all have their ultimate origin in knowledge
pursued for its own sake. The use of the compass was not introduced into
Europe till the end of the twelfth century A.D., more than 3,000 years
after its first use in China. The importance which the science of electro-
magnetism has since assumed in every department of human life is not
 ON MATH E MATICAL M ETHOD 63

due to the superior practical bias of Europeans, but to the fact that in the
West electrical and magnetic phenomena were studied by men who were
dominated by abstract theoretic interests.
The discovery of the electric current is due to two Italians, Galvani
in 1780, and Volta in 1792. This great invention opened a new series of
phenomena for investigation. The scientific world had now three separate,
though allied, groups of occurrences on hand—the effects of “statical”
electricity arising from frictional electrical machines, the magnetic
phenomena, and the effects due to electric currents. From the end of the
eighteenth century onwards, these three lines of investigation were
quickly interconnected and the modern science of electro-magnetism
was constructed which now threatens to transform human life.
Mathematical ideas now appear. During the decade 1780 to 1789,
Coulomb, a Frenchman, proved that magnetic poles attract or repel each
other, in proportion to the inverse square of their distances, and also that
the same law holds for electric charges—laws curiously analogous to that of
gravitation. In 1820, Öersted, a Dane, discovered that electric currents exert
a force on magnets, and almost immediately afterwards the mathematical
law of the force was correctly formulated by Ampère, a Frenchman, who
also proved that two electric currents exerted forces on each other.
The experimental investigation by which Ampère established the
law of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the
most brilliant achievements in science. The whole, theory and
experiment, seems as if it had leaped full grown and full armed, from
the brain of the ‘Newton of Electricity.’ It is perfect in form, and
unassailable in accuracy, and it is summed up in a formula from which
all the phenomena may be deduced, and which must always remain the
cardinal formula of electrodynamics.

The momentous laws of induction between currents and between

currents and magnets were discovered by Michael Faraday in 1831–32.
Faraday was asked: “What is the use of this discovery?” He answered:
“What is the use of a child—it grows to be a man.” Faraday’s child has grown
to be a man and is now the basis of all the modern applications of electricity.
Faraday also reorganized the whole theoretical conception of the science.
His ideas, which had not been fully understood by the scientific world,
were extended and put into a directly mathematical form by Clerk Maxwell
in 1873. As a result of his mathematical investigations, Maxwell
recognized that, under certain conditions, electrical vibrations ought to
be propagated. He at once suggested that the vibrations which form
light are electrical. This suggestion has since been verified, so that now the
64 Alfred North Whitehead

whole theory of light is nothing but a branch of the great science of

electricity. Also Hertz, a German, in 1888, following on Maxwell’s ideas,
succeeded in producing electric vibrations by direct electrical methods.
His experiments are the basis of our wireless telegraphy.
In more recent years even more fundamental discoveries have been
made, and the science continues to grow in theoretic importance and in
practical interest. This rapid sketch of its progress illustrates how, by the
gradual introduction of the relevant theoretic ideas, suggested by
experiment and themselves suggesting fresh experiments, a whole mass
of isolated and even trivial phenomena are welded together into one
coherent science, in which the results of abstract mathematical deductions,
starting from a few simple assumed laws, supply the explanation to the
complex tangle of the course of events.
Finally, passing beyond the particular sciences of electro-magnetism
and light, we can generalize our point of view still further, and direct
our attention to the growth of mathematical physics considered as one
great chapter of scientific thought. In the first place, what in the barest
outlines is the story of its growth?
It did not begin as one science, or as the product of one band of men.
The Chaldean shepherds watched the skies, the agents of government in
Mesopotamia and Egypt measured the land, priests and philosophers
brooded on the general nature of all things. The vast mass of the operations
of nature appeared due to mysterious unfathomable forces. “The wind
bloweth where it listeth” expresses accurately the blank ignorance then
existing of any stable rules followed in detail by the succession of
phenomena. In broad outline, then as now, a regularity of events was
patent. But no minute tracing of their interconnection was possible, and
there was no knowledge how even to set about to construct such a science.
Detached speculations, a few happy or unhappy shots at the nature of
things, formed the utmost which could be produced.
Meanwhile land surveys had produced geometry, and the observations
of the heavens disclosed the exact regularity of the solar system. Some of
the later Greeks, such as Archimedes, had just views on the elementary
phenomena of hydrostatics and optics. Indeed, Archimedes, who
combined a genius for mathematics with a physical insight, must rank
with Newton, who lived nearly two thousand years later, as one of the
founders of mathematical physics. He lived at Syracuse, the great Greek
city of Sicily. When the Romans besieged the town (in 212 to 210 B.C.),
he is said to have burned their ships by concentrating on them, by means
of mirrors, the sun’s rays. The story is highly improbable, but is good evi-
 ON MATH E MATICAL M ETHOD 65

dence of the reputation which he had gained among his contemporaries

for his knowledge of optics. At the end of this siege he was killed.
According to one account given by Plutarch, in his life of Marcellus, he
was found by a Roman soldier absorbed in the study of a geometrical
diagram which he had traced on the sandy floor of his room. He did not
immediately obey the orders of his captor, and so was killed. For the
credit of the Roman generals it must be said that the soldiers had orders
to spare him. The internal evidence for the other famous story of him is
very strong; for the discovery attributed to him is one eminently worthy
of his genius for mathematical and physical research. Luckily, it is simple
enough to be explained here in detail. It is one of the best easy examples
of the method of application of mathematical ideas to physics.
Hiero, King of Syracuse, had sent a quantity of gold to some goldsmith
to form the material of a crown. He suspected that the craftsman had
abstracted some of the gold and had supplied its place by alloying the
remainder with some baser metal. Hiero sent the crown to Archimedes
and asked him to test it. In these days an indefinite number of chemical
tests would be available. But then Archimedes had to think out the
matter afresh. The solution flashed upon him as he lay in his bath. He

Fig. 3

jumped up and ran through the streets to the palace, shouting Eureka!
Eureka! (I have found it, I have found it). This day, if we knew which it
was, ought to be celebrated as the birthday of mathematical physics; the
science came of age when Newton sat in his orchard. Archimedes had
in truth made a great discovery. He saw that a body when immersed in
water is pressed upwards by the surrounding water with a resultant force
equal to the weight of the water it displaces. This law can be proved
66 Alfred North Whitehead

theoretically from the mathematical principles of hydrostatics and can

also be verified experimentally. Hence, if W lb. be the weight of the
crown, as weighed in air, and w lb. be the weight of the water which it
displaces when completely immersed, W – w would be the extra upward
force necessary to sustain the crown as it hung in water.
Now, this upward force can easily be ascertained by weighing the
body as it hangs in water, as shown in Fig. 3. If the weights in the right-
hand scale come to F lb., then the apparent weight of the crown in water
is F lb.; and we thus have

where W and F are determined by the easy, and fairly precise, operation
of weighing. Hence, by equation (A), is known. But is the ratio
of the weight of the crown to the weight of an equal volume of water.
This ratio is the same for any lump of metal of the same material: it is
now called the specific gravity of the material, and depends only on the
intrinsic nature of the substance and not on its shape or quantity. Thus
to test if the crown were of gold, Archimedes had only to take a lump of
indisputably pure gold and find its specific gravity by the same process.
If the two specific gravities agreed, the crown was pure; if they disagreed,
it was debased.
This argument has been given at length, because not only is it the
first precise example of the application of mathematical ideas to physics,
but also because it is a perfect and simple example of what must be the
method and spirit of the science for all time.
The death of Archimedes by the hands of a Roman soldier is symbolical
of a world change of the first magnitude: the theoretical Greeks, with
their love of abstract science, were superseded in the leadership of the
European world by the practical Romans. Lord Beaconsfield, in one of
his novels, has defined a practical man as a man who practises the errors
of his forefathers. The Romans were a great race, but they were cursed
with the sterility which waits upon practicality. They did not improve
upon the knowledge of their forefathers, and all their advances were
confined to the minor technical details of engineering. They were not
dreamers enough to arrive at new points of view, which could give a
more fundamental control over the forces of nature. No Roman lost his
 ON MATH E MATICAL M ETHOD 67

life because he was absorbed in the contemplation of a mathematical

diagram.

The foregoing consists of Chapters I–III

from Whitehead’s AN INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS.
 On the Nature
of a Calculus

1. Signs
ords, spoken or written, and the symbols of Mathematics
are alike signs. Signs have been analysed into (α) suggestive signs, (β )
expressive signs, (γ ) substitutive signs.
A suggestive sign is the most rudimentary possible, and need not be
dwelt upon here. An obvious example of one is a knot tied in a
handkerchief to remind the owner of some duty to be performed.
In the use of expressive signs the attention is not fixed on the sign
itself but on what it expresses; that is to say, it is fixed on the meaning
conveyed by the sign. Ordinary language consists of groups of expressive
signs, its primary object being to draw attention to the meaning of the
words employed. Language, no doubt, in its secondary uses has some of
the characteristics of a system of substitutive signs. It remedies the
inability of the imagination to bring readily before the mind the whole
extent of complex ideas by associating these ideas with familiar sounds
or marks; and it is not always necessary for the attention to dwell on the
complete meaning while using these symbols. But with all this allowance
it remains true that language when challenged by criticism refers us to
the meaning and not to the natural or conventional properties of its
symbols for an explanation of its processes.
A substitutive sign is such that in thought it takes the place of that for
which it is substituted. A counter in a game may be such a sign: at the
end of the game the counters lost or won may be interpreted in the form
of money, but till then it may be convenient for attention to be concentrated
on the counters and not on their signification. The signs of a
Mathematical Calculus are substitutive signs.
The difference between words and substitutive signs has been stated
68
 ON TH E NATU RE OF A CALCU LU S 69

thus, “a word is an instrument for thinking about the meaning which it

expresses; a substitute sign is a means of not thinking about the meaning
which it symbolizes.” 1 The use of substitutive signs in reasoning is to
economize thought.
2. Definition of a Calculus. In order that reasoning may be conducted by
means of substitutive signs, it is necessary that rules be given for the
manipulation of the signs. The rules should be such that the final state
of the signs after a series of operations according to rule denotes, when
the signs are interpreted in terms of the things for which they are
substituted, a proposition true for the things represented by the signs.
The art of the manipulation of substitutive signs according to fixed
rules, and of the deduction therefrom of true propositions is a Calculus.
We may therefore define a sign used in a Calculus as “an arbitrary
mark, having a fixed interpretation, and susceptible of combination with
other signs in subjection to fixed laws dependent upon their mutual
interpretation.” 2
The interpretation of any sign used in a series of operations must be
fixed in the sense of being the same throughout, but in a certain sense it
may be ambiguous. For instance in ordinary Algebra a letter x may be
used in a series of operations, and x may be defined to be any algebraical
quantity, without further specification of the special quantity chosen.
Such a sign denotes any one of an assigned class with certain unambig-
uously defined characteristics. In the same series of operations the sign
must always denote the same member of the class; but as far as any ex-
plicit definitions are concerned any member will do.
When once the rules for the manipulation of the signs of a calculus
are known, the art of their practical manipulation can be studied apart
from any attention to the meaning to be assigned to the signs. It is
obvious that we can take any marks we like and manipulate them
according to any rules we choose to assign. It is also equally obvious
that in general such occupations must be frivolous. They possess a serious
scientific value when there is a similarity of type of the signs and of the
rules of manipulation to those of some calculus in which the marks used
are substitutive signs for things and relations of things. The comparative
study of the various forms produced by variation of rules throws light
on the principles of the calculus. Furthermore the knowledge thus gained
gives facility in the invention of some significant calculus designed to
facilitate reasoning with respect to some given subject.
1. Cf. Stout, “Thought and Language,” Mind, April, 1891.
2. Boole, Laws of Thought, Ch. II.
70 Alfred North Whitehead

It enters therefore into the definition of a calculus properly so called

that the marks used in it are substitutive signs. But when a set of marks
and the rules for their arrangements and rearrangements are analogous
to those of a significant calculus so that the study of the allowable forms
of their arrangements throws light on that of the calculus, or when the
marks and their rules of arrangement are such as appear likely to receive
an interpretation as substitutive signs or to facilitate the invention of a
true calculus, then the art of arranging such marks may be called—by an
extension of the term—an uninterpreted calculus. The study of such a
calculus is of scientific value. The marks used in it will be called signs
or symbols as are those of a true calculus, thus tacitly suggesting that
there is some unknown interpretation which could be given to the
calculus.
3. Equivalence. It is necessary to note the form in which propositions
occur in a calculus. Such a form may well be highly artificial from some
points of view, and may yet state the propositions in a convenient form
for the eliciting of deductions. Furthermore it is not necessary to assert
that the form is a general form into which all judgments can be put by
the aid of some torture. It is sufficient to observe that it is a form of wide
application.
In a calculus of the type here considered propositions take the form of
assertions of equivalence. One thing or fact, which may be complex and
involve an interrelated group of things or a succession of facts, is asserted
to be equivalent in some sense or other to another thing or fact.
Accordingly the sign = is taken to denote that the signs or groups of
signs on either side of it are equivalent, and therefore symbolize things
which are so far equivalent. When two groups of symbols are connected
by this sign, it is to be understood that one group may be substituted for
the other group whenever either occurs in the calculus under conditions
for which the assertion of equivalence holds good.
The idea of equivalence requires some explanation. Two things are
equivalent when for some purpose they can be used indifferently. Thus
the equivalence of distinct things implies a certain defined purpose in
view, a certain limitation of thought or of action. Then within this limited
field no distinction of property exists between the two things.
As an instance of the limitation of the field of equivalence consider

an ordinary algebraical equation, f(x, y) = 0. Then in finding by the for-

mula, we may not substitute 0 for f on the right-hand side

 ON TH E NATU RE OF A CALCU LU S 71

of the last equation, though the equivalence of the two symbols has been
asserted in the first equation, the reason being that the limitations under
which f = 0 has been asserted are violated when f undergoes partial
differentiation.
The idea of equivalence must be carefully distinguished from that of
mere identity. No investigations which proceed by the aid of propositions
merely asserting identities such as A is A, can ever result in anything
but barren identities. Equivalence on the other hand implies non-identity
as its general case. Identity may be conceived as a special limiting case of
equivalence. For instance in arithmetic we write, 2 + 3 = 3 + 2. This
means that, in so far as the total number of objects mentioned, 2 + 3 and
3 + 2 come to the same number, namely 5. But 2 + 3 and 3 + 2 are not
identical; the order of the symbols is different in the two combinations,
and this difference of order directs different processes of thought. The
importance of the equation arises from its assertion that these different
processes of thought are identical as far as the total number of things
thought of is concerned.
From this arithmetical point of view it is tempting to define equivalent
things as being merely different ways of thinking of the same thing as it
exists in the external world. Thus there is a certain aggregate, say of 5
things, which is thought of in different ways, as 2 + 3 and as 3 + 2. A
sufficient objection to this definition is that the man who shall succeed
in stating intelligibly the distinction between himself and the rest of the
world will have solved the central problem of philosophy. As there is no
universally accepted solution of this problem, it is obviously undesirable
to assume this distinction as the basis of mathematical reasoning.
Thus from another point of view all things which for any purpose
can be conceived as equivalent form the extension (in the logical sense)
of some universal conception. And conversely the collection of objects
which together form the extension of some universal conception can for
some purpose be treated as equivalent. So b = b´ can be interpreted as
symbolizing the fact that the two individual things b and b´ are two
individual cases of the same general conception B. For instance if b stand
for 2 + 3 and b´ for 3 + 2, both b and b´ are individual instances of the
general conception of a group of five things.
The sign = as used in a calculus must be discriminated from the
logical copula “is.” Two things b and b´ are connected in a calculus by
the sign =, so that b = b´, when both b and b´ possess the attribute B. But
we may not translate this into the standard logical form, b is b´. On the
contrary, we say, b is B, and b´ is B; and we may not translate these
72 Alfred North Whitehead

standard forms of formal logic into the symbolic form, b = B, b´ = B; at

least we may not do so, if the sign = is to have the meaning which is
assigned to it in a calculus.
It is to be observed that the proposition asserted by the equation, b = b´,
consists of two elements; which for the sake of distinctness we will name,
and will call respectively the “truism” and the “paradox.” The truism is
the partial identity of both b and b´, their common B-ness. The paradox
is the distinction between b and b´, so that b is one thing and b´ is
another thing: and these things, as being different, must have in some
relation diverse properties. In assertions of equivalence as contained in a
calculus the truism is passed over with the slightest possible attention, the
main stress being laid on the paradox. Thus in the equation 2 + 3 = 3 + 2,
the fact that both sides represent a common five-ness of number is not
even mentioned explicitly. The sole direct statement is that the two
different things 3 + 2 and 2 + 3 are in point of number equivalent.
The reason for this unequal distribution of attention is easy to
understand. In order to discover new propositions asserting equivalence
it is requisite to discover easy marks or tests of equivalent things. These
tests are discovered by a careful discussion of the truism, of the common
B-ness of b and b´. But when once such tests have been elaborated, we
may drop all thought of the essential nature of the attribute B, and simply
apply the superficial test to b and b´ in order to verify b = b´. Thus in
order to verify that thirty-seven times fifty-six is equal to fifty-six times
thirty-seven, we may use the entirely superficial test applicable to this
case that the same factors are mentioned as multiplied, though in different
order.
This discussion leads us at once to comprehend the essence of a
calculus of substitutive signs. The signs are by convention to be
considered equivalent when certain conditions hold. And these
conditions when interpreted imply the fulfilment of the tests of
equivalence.
Thus in the discussion of the laws of a calculus stress is laid on the
truism, in the development of the consequences on the paradox.
4. Operations. Judgments of equivalence can be founded on direct
perception, as when it is judged by direct perception that two different
pieces of stuff match in colour. But the judgment may be founded on a
knowledge of the respective derivations of the things judged to be
equivalent from other things respectively either identical or equivalent.
It is this process of derivation which is the special province of a calculus.
The derivation of a thing p from things a, b, c, . . . , can also be conceived
 ON TH E NATU RE OF A CALCU LU S 73

as an operation on the things a, b, c, . . . , which produces the thing p.

The idea of derivation includes that of a series of phenomenal
occurrences. Thus two pieces of stuff may be judged to match in colour
because they were dyed in the same dipping, or were cut from the same
piece of stuff. But the idea is more general than that of phenomenal
sequence of events: it includes purely logical activities of the mind, as
when it is judged that an aggregate of five things has been presented to
the mind by two aggregates of three things and of two things respectively.
Another example of derivation is that of two propositions a and b which
are both derived by strict deductive reasoning from the same propositions
c, d, and e. The two propositions are either both proved or both unproved
according as c, d, and e are granted or disputed. Thus a and b are so far
equivalent. In other words a and b may be considered as the equivalent
results of two operations on c, d and e.
The words operation, combination, derivation, and synthesis will be
used to express the same general idea, of which each word suggests a
somewhat specialized form. This general idea may be defined thus: A
thing a will be said to result from an operation on other things, c, d, e,
etc., when a is presented to the mind as the result of the presentations of
c, d and e, etc. under certain conditions; and these conditions are
phenomenal events or mental activities which it is convenient to separate
in idea into a group by themselves and to consider as defining the nature
of the operation which is performed on c, d, e, etc.
Furthermore the fact that c, d, e, etc. are capable of undergoing a
certain operation involving them all will be considered as constituting a
relation between c, d, e, etc.
Also the fact that c is capable of undergoing an operation of a certain
general kind will be considered as a property of c. Any additional
specialization of the kind of operation or of the nature of the result will
be considered as a mode of that property.
5. Substitutive Schemes. Let a, a´, etc., b, b´, etc., ......z, z´, etc., denote
any set of objects considered in relation to some common property which
is symbolized by the use of the italic alphabet of letters. The common
property may not be possessed in the same mode by different members of
the set. Their equivalence, or identity in relation to this property, is
symbolized by a literal identity. Thus the fact that the things a and m´
are both symbolized by letters from the italic alphabet is here a sign that
the things have some property in common, and the fact that the letters a
and m´ are different letters is a sign that the two things possess this
74 Alfred North Whitehead

common property in different modes. On the other hand the two things
a and a´ possess the common property in the same mode, and as far as
this property is concerned they are equivalent. Let the sign = express
equivalence in relation to this property, then a = a´, and m = m´.
Let a set of things such as that described above, considered in relation
to their possession of a common property in equivalent or in non-
equivalent modes, be called a scheme of things; and let the common
property of which the possession by any object marks that object as
belonging to the scheme be called the determining property of the scheme.
Thus objects belonging to the same scheme are equivalent if they possess
the determining property in the same mode.
Now relations must exist between non-equivalent things of the scheme
which depend on the differences between the modes in which they possess
the determining property of the scheme. In consequence of these relations
from things a, b, c, etc. of the scheme another thing m of the scheme can
be derived by certain operations. The equivalence, m = m´, will exist
between m and m´, if m and m´ are derived from other things of the
scheme by operations which only differ in certain assigned modes. The
modes in which processes of derivation of equivalent things m and m´
from other things of the scheme can differ without destroying the
equivalence of m and m´ will be called the characteristics of the scheme.
Now it may happen that two schemes of things—with of course different
determining properties—have the same characteristics. Also it may be
possible to establish an unambiguous correspondence between the things
of the two schemes, so that if a, a´, b, etc., belong to one scheme and α,
α´, β, etc., belong to the other, then a corresponds to α, a´ to α´, b to β
and so on. The essential rule of the correspondence is that if in one
scheme two things, say a and a´, are equivalent, then in the other scheme
their corresponding things α and α´ are equivalent. Accordingly to any
process of derivation in the italic alphabet by which m is derived from a,
b, etc. there must correspond a process of derivation in the Greek alphabet
by which µ is derived from α, β, etc.
In such a case instead of reasoning with respect to the properties of
one scheme in order to deduce equivalences, we may substitute the other
scheme, or conversely; and then transpose at the end of the argument.
This device of reasoning, which is almost universal in mathematics, we
will call the method of substitutive schemes, or more briefly, the method
of substitution.
These substituted things belonging to another scheme are nothing else
than substitutive signs. For in the use of substituted schemes we cease to
 ON TH E NATU RE OF A CALCU LU S 75

think of the original scheme. The rule of reasoning is to confine thought

to those properties, previously determined, which are shared in common
with the original scheme, and to interpret the results from one set of
things into the other at the end of the argument.
An instance of this process of reasoning by substitution is to be found
in the theory of quantity. Quantities are measured by their ratio to an
arbitrarily assumed quantity of the same kind, called the unit. Any set
of quantities of one kind can be represented by a corresponding set of
quantities of any other kind merely in so far as their numerical ratios to
their unit are concerned. For the representative set have only to bear the
same ratios to their unit as do the original set to their unit.
6. Conventional Schemes. The use of a calculus of substitutive signs in
reasoning can now be explained.
Besides using substitutive schemes with naturally suitable properties,
we may by convention assign to arbitrary marks laws of equivalence
which are identical with the laws of equivalence of the originals about
which we desire to reason. The set of marks may then be considered as
a scheme of things with properties assigned by convention. The
determining property of the scheme is that the marks are of certain
assigned sorts arranged in certain types of sequence. The characteristics
of the scheme are the conventional laws by which certain arrangements
of the marks in sequence on paper are to be taken as equivalent. As long
as the marks are treated as mutually determined by their conventional
properties, reasoning concerning the marks will hold good concerning
the originals for which the marks are substitutive signs. For instance in
the employment of the marks x, y, +, the equation, x + y = y + x, asserts
that a certain union on paper of x and y possesses the conventional quality
that the order of x and y is indifferent. Therefore any union of two
things with a result independent of any precedence of one thing before
the other possesses so far properties identical with those of the union
above set down between x and y. Not only can the reasoning be transferred
from the originals to the substitutive signs, but the imaginative thought
itself can in a large measure be avoided. For whereas combinations of
the original things are possible only in thought and by an act of the
imagination, the combinations of the conventional substitutive signs of
a calculus are physically made on paper. The mind has simply to attend
to the rules for transformation and to use its experience and imagination
to suggest likely methods of procedure. The rest is merely physical actual
interchange of the signs instead of thought about the originals.
A calculus avoids the necessity of inference and replaces it by an ex-
76 Alfred North Whitehead

ternal demonstration, where inference and external demonstration are

to be taken in the senses assigned to them by F. H. Bradley. 3 In this
connection a demonstration is to be defined as a process of combining a
complex of facts, the data, into a whole so that some new fact is evident.
Inference is an ideal combination or construction within the mind of
the reasoner which results in the intuitive evidence of a new fact or
relation between the data. But in the use of a calculus this process of
combination is externally performed by the combination of the concrete
symbols, with the result of a new fact respecting the symbols which
arises for sensuous perception.4 When this new fact is treated as a symbol
carrying a meaning, it is found to mean the fact which would have been
intuitively evident in the process of inference.
7. Uninterpretable Forms. The logical difficulty involved in the use of a
calculus only partially interpretable can now be explained. The discussion
of this great problem in its application to the special case of (–1)½ engaged
the attention of the leading mathematicians of the first half of this century,
and led to the development on the one hand of the Theory of Functions
of a Complex Variable, and on the other hand of the science here called
Universal Algebra.
The difficulty is this: the symbol (–1)½ is absolutely without meaning
when it is endeavoured to interpret it as a number; but algebraic
transformations which involve the use of complex quantities of the form
a + bi, where a and b are numbers and i stands for the above symbol,
yield propositions which do relate purely to number. As a matter of fact
the propositions thus discovered were found to be true propositions.
The method therefore was trusted, before any explanation was
forthcoming why algebraic reasoning which had no intelligible
interpretation in arithmetic should give true arithmetical results.
The difficulty was solved by observing that Algebra does not depend
on Arithmetic for the validity of its laws of transformation. If there were
such a dependence, it is obvious that as soon as algebraic expressions are
arithmetically unintelligible all laws respecting them must lose their
validity. But the laws of Algebra, though suggested by Arithmetic, do
not depend on it. They depend entirely on the convention by which it
is stated that certain modes of grouping the symbols are to be considered as

3. Cf. Bradley, Principles of Logic, Bk II. Pt I. Ch. III.

4. Cf. C. S. Peirce, Amer. Journ. of Math. Vol. VII. p. 182: “As for algebra, the very idea of
the art is that it presents formulae which can be manipulated, and that by observing the
effects of such manipulation we find properties not otherwise to be discovered.”
 ON TH E NATU RE OF A CALCU LU S 77

identical. This assigns certain properties to the marks which form the
symbols of Algebra. The laws regulating the manipulation of the algebraic
symbols are identical with those of Arithmetic. It follows that no algebraic
theorem can ever contradict any result which could be arrived at by
Arithmetic; for the reasoning in both cases merely applies the same
general laws to different classes of things. If an algebraic theorem is
interpretable in Arithmetic, the corresponding arithmetical theorem is
therefore true. In short when once Algebra is conceived as an independent
science dealing with the relations of certain marks conditioned by the
observance of certain conventional laws, the difficulty vanishes. If the
laws be identical, the theorems of the one science can only give results
conditioned by the laws which also hold good for the other science; and
therefore these results, when interpretable, are true.
It will be observed that the explanation of the legitimacy of the use of
a partially interpretable calculus does not depend upon the fact that in
another field of thought the calculus is entirely interpretable. The
discovery of an interpretation undoubtedly gave the clue by means of
which the true solution was arrived at. For the fact that the processes of
the calculus were interpretable in a science so independent of Arithmetic
as is Geometry at once showed that the laws of the calculus might have
been defined in reference to geometrical processes. But it was a paradox
to assert that a science like Algebra, which had been studied for centuries
without reference to Geometry, was after all dependent upon Geometry
for its first principles. The step to the true explanation was then easily
taken.
But the importance of the assistance given to the study of Algebra by
the discovery of a complete interpretation of its processes cannot be over-
estimated. It is natural to think of the substitutive set of things as assisting
the study of the properties of the originals. Especially is this the case
with a calculus of which the interest almost entirely depends upon its
relation to the originals. But it must be remembered that conversely the
originals give immense aid to the study of the substitutive things or
symbols.
The whole of Mathematics consists in the organization of a series of
aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning; and for this purpose
device is piled upon device. No sooner has a substitutive scheme been
devised to assist in the investigation of any originals, than the imagination
begins to use the originals to assist in the investigation of the substitutive
scheme. In some connections it would be better to abandon the
conception of originals studied by the aid of substitutive schemes, and
78 Alfred North Whitehead

to conceive of two sets of interrelated things studied together, each scheme

exemplifying the operation of the same general laws. The discovery
therefore of the geometrical representation of the algebraical complex
quantity, though unessential to the logic of Algebra, has been quite
essential to the modern developments of the science.

The foregoing consists of Chapter I

from Whitehead’s A TREATIS E ON U NIVE RSAL ALGEBRA.
 Bertrand Russell
1872–1970

R ussell began worrying about the foundations of mathematics at

the age of eleven. He was studying Euclid at that time and was
disappointed to learn that he was expected to accept some things
without proof. It seemed a little slipshod to him. He wanted
everything proved. He never lost this desire for clarity and certainty;
it led him to attempt to establish the logical basis for all mathematics.
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician, was
born at Trelleck, in Monmouthshire, in 1872. Both of his parents
died before he was four years old and he was brought up by his
grandmother, Countess Russell. A woman of strong religious
beliefs, she instilled in Russell the ideas that he must be of service
to mankind and that he should always have the courage to follow
his own conscience. Russell was profoundly influenced by his
grandmother. Although he rejected her religious teachings at an
early age, he used his immense talent in humane and liberal causes
for over half a century. He publicly and courageously committed
himself on many controversial issues; more than once this meant
going to prison.
Russell was tutored at home until he was eighteen. Then he
entered Cambridge. Until this time his life had been rather solitary,
but now a new world opened. At Cambridge he found a group of
contemporaries with whom he could have endless discussions on
everything. The mental adventure began. It ended only upon his
death in 1970. On his eightieth birthday Russell recommended, for
longevity, a “habit of hilarious Olympian controversy.”
One of the most productive and brilliant thinkers of our age,
Russell expressed himself vividly on many aspects of our culture—
education, politics, history, manners, morals, war, and peace. A
79
80 Bertrand Russell

partial list of his writings includes: Mysticism and Logic, and Other Essays
(1918), Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), An Outline of
Philosophy (1927), Marriage and Morals (1929), The Scientific Outlook
(1931), An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), History of Western
Philosophy (1945), and, in collaboration with Alfred North Whitehead,
Principia Mathematica (1910–13). He won the Nobel Prize for literature
in 1950.
Logic is central in Russell’s philosophy. His views on many things
changed profoundly in the course of his life, but these changes all
proceeded from successively deeper applications of his logical
method. This method dates from the year 1900, which Russell called
the most important year of his intellectual life. It was then, at the
International Congress of Philosophy in Paris, which Russell
attended with Whitehead, that Giuseppe Peano introduced a method
for reasoning in symbols. Russell saw that it could extend the region
of mathematical precision backward into areas that hitherto had
been given over to vague speculation. The project of deducing
mathematics from logic also appealed to Whitehead, and they began
a remarkable intellectual collaboration. The result is the famous
Principia Mathematica.

T he first two of the following three selections are taken from

Mysticism and Logic. In The Study of Mathematics, mathematics is
conceived as a purely formal science. It is not derived from
experience. And therein, for Russell, lies its beauty. Life can be a
pretty muddled affair, “but the world of pure reason knows no
compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative
activity. . . .” Russell takes a critical look at educational methods
that become so bogged down acquiring the first elements of the
subject that the goal is never reached, or even glimpsed. This goal
is Plato’s world of “divine necessity,” the world of purely intellectual

Notes from the artist: “. . . a ‘ball of yarn’ technique—

with a liberal sprinkling of mathematical formulas—was employed
to express the restlessness and the constant searching and probing
that is so much a part of the character of Russell.
The quotation is from Human Knowledge.”
82 Bertrand Russell

activity. Russell’s passionate belief in it is contagious. He does not

actually lead you inside the temple (he comes out on the steps to
talk to you), but he leaves no doubt that the temple is there.
In Mathematics and the Metaphysicians, Russell makes the assertion
that mathematics is the same thing as formal logic, as founded by
Aristotle. But modern logic has gone beyond Aristotle; it has become
symbolic. Words have been replaced by symbols that have no
reference to the world of things. Why has this been so important in
examining the foundations of mathematics? The answer seems
paradoxical. Symbolism is useful because it makes things difficult
(but only in the beginning).
Suspend your common sense when you read this article. You
will be asked to believe that there is no such thing as the next
moment; that when a thing moves, it is not in a state of motion; that
there are just as many even numbers as there are numbers
altogether; that the number of days in all time is no greater than the
number of years. Russell intends to take the mystery out of
mathematics. He does not hesitate to use shock treatment.
Traditional mathematics suffered a crisis in the nineteenth century.
A vast superstructure of knowledge had been erected without
sufficient thought of the foundation. Cracks appeared, hasty repairs
were made, but repairs were really not enough. What was needed
was a complete reconstruction of the foundation. The following
selection is part of this project.
Definition of Number is taken from Introduction to Mathematical
Philosophy, written during World War I. Russell was in jail when he
wrote it. He had been imprisoned for several months because he
had written a pamphlet accusing the American Army of “intimidating
strikes at home.” This was regarded as likely to impair the
relationship between Great Britain and America. (The governor of
the prison was required to read the manuscript for possible seditious
tendencies.)
A definition of an idea usually expresses the idea in concepts
which are more familiar to us. When the idea is as familiar as
“number,” what we say in explanation of it is likely to seem stranger
than the thing itself. Thus, a definition of number might seem at
first glance to be an arduous and needless task. The predicament of
the centipede who was getting along very well until asked which leg
came after which seems applicable. However, there is a reason for
 Bertrand Russell 83

presenting the familiar in unfamiliar terms. It puts us at a distance

from something which, otherwise, is too close to be seen.
The habit of mind that is developed in defining the obvious will
stand you in very good stead when you enter the world of abstract
thought. Your definitions will be your only landmarks.
 The Study of Mathematics

n regard to every form of human activity it is necessary that the

question should be asked from time to time, What is its purpose and
ideal? In what way does it contribute to the beauty of human existence?
As respects those pursuits which contribute only remotely, by providing
the mechanism of life, it is well to be reminded that not the mere fact of
living is to be desired, but the art of living in the contemplation of great
things. Still more in regard to those avocations which have no end outside
themselves, which are to be justified, if at all, as actually adding to the
sum of the world’s permanent possessions, it is necessary to keep alive a
knowledge of their aims, a clear prefiguring vision of the temple in
which creative imagination is to be embodied.
The fulfilment of this need, in what concerns the studies forming the
material upon which custom has decided to train the youthful mind, is
indeed sadly remote—so remote as to make the mere statement of such a
claim appear preposterous. Great men, fully alive to the beauty of the
contemplations to whose service their lives are devoted, desiring that
others may share in their joys, persuade mankind to impart to the
successive generations the mechanical knowledge without which it is
impossible to cross the threshold. Dry pedants possess themselves of the
privilege of instilling this knowledge: they forget that it is to serve but
as a key to open the doors of the temple; though they spend their lives
on the steps leading up to those sacred doors, they turn their backs upon
the temple so resolutely that its very existence is forgotten, and the eager
youth, who would press forward to be initiated to its domes and arches,
is bidden to turn back and count the steps.
Mathematics, perhaps more even than the study of Greece and Rome,
has suffered from this oblivion of its due place in civilization. Although
tradition has decreed that the great bulk of educated men shall know at
least the elements of the subject, the reasons for which the tradition arose
are forgotten, buried beneath a great rubbish-heap of pedantries and

84
 TH E STU DY OF MATH E MATICS 85

trivialities. To those who inquire as to the purpose of mathematics, the

usual answer will be that it facilitates the making of machines, the
travelling from place to place, and the victory over foreign nations, whether
in war or commerce. If it be objected that these ends—all of which are of
doubtful value—are not furthered by the merely elementary study imposed
upon those who do not become expert mathematicians, the reply, it is
true, will probably be that mathematics trains the reasoning faculties. Yet
the very men who make this reply are, for the most part, unwilling to
abandon the teaching of definite fallacies, known to be such, and
instinctively rejected by the unsophisticated mind of every intelligent
learner. And the reasoning faculty itself is generally conceived, by those
who urge its cultivation, as merely a means for the avoidance of pitfalls
and a help in the discovery of rules for the guidance of practical life. All
these are undeniably important achievements to the credit of mathematics;
yet it is none of these that entitles mathematics to a place in every liberal
education. Plato, we know, regarded the contemplation of mathematical
truths as worthy of the Deity; and Plato realized, more perhaps than any
other single man, what those elements are in human life which merit a
place in heaven. There is in mathematics, he says, “something which is
necessary and cannot be set aside . . . and, if I mistake not, of divine necessity;
for as to the human necessities of which the Many talk in this connection,
nothing can be more ridiculous than such an application of the words.
Cleinias. And what are these necessities of knowledge, Stranger, which are
divine and not human? Athenian. Those things without some use or
knowledge of which a man cannot become a God to the world, nor a
spirit, nor yet a hero, nor able earnestly to think and care for man.” 1 Such
was Plato’s judgment of mathematics; but the mathematicians do not read
Plato, while those who read him know no mathematics, and regard his
opinion upon this question as merely a curious aberration.
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme
beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal
to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of
painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection
such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the
exaltation, the sense of being more than man, which is the touchstone
of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in
poetry. What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as
a task, but to be assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought
again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.

1. This passage was pointed out to me by Professor Gilbert Murray.

86 Bertrand Russell

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise

between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows
no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity
embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect
from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote
even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually
created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural
home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from
the dreary exile of the actual world.
So little, however, have mathematicians aimed at beauty, that hardly
anything in their work has had this conscious purpose. Much, owing to
irrepressible instincts, which were better than avowed beliefs, has been
moulded by an unconscious taste; but much also has been spoilt by false
notions of what was fitting. The characteristic excellence of mathematics
is only to be found where the reasoning is rigidly logical: the rules of
logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture. In
the most beautiful work, a chain of argument is presented in which
every link is important on its own account, in which there is an air of
ease and lucidity throughout, and the premises achieve more than would
have been thought possible, by means which appear natural and
inevitable. Literature embodies what is general in particular
circumstances whose universal significance shines through their
individual dress; but mathematics endeavours to present whatever is
most general in its purity, without any irrelevant trappings.
How should the teaching of mathematics be conducted so as to
communicate to the learner as much as possible of this high ideal? Here
experience must, in a great measure, be our guide, but some maxims
may result from our consideration of the ultimate purpose to be achieved.
One of the chief ends served by mathematics, when rightly taught, is
to awaken the learner’s belief in reason, his confidence in the truth of
what has been demonstrated, and in the value of demonstration. This
purpose is not served by existing instruction; but it is easy to see ways in
which it might be served. At present, in what concerns arithmetic, the
boy or girl is given a set of rules, which present themselves as neither
true nor false, but as merely the will of the teacher, the way in which, for
some unfathomable reason, the teacher prefers to have the game played.
To some degree, in a study of such definite practical utility, this is no
doubt unavoidable; but as soon as possible, the reasons of rules should
be set forth by whatever means most readily appeal to the childish mind.
In geometry, instead of the tedious apparatus of fallacious proofs for ob-
 TH E STU DY OF MATH E MATICS 87

vious truisms which constitutes the beginning of Euclid, the learner

should be allowed at first to assume the truth of everything obvious, and
should be instructed in the demonstrations of theorems which are at
once startling and easily verifiable by actual drawing, such as those in
which it is shown that three or more lines meet in a point. In this way
belief is generated; it is seen that reasoning may lead to startling
conclusions, which nevertheless the facts will verify; and thus the
instinctive distrust of whatever is abstract or rational is gradually
overcome. Where theorems are difficult, they should be first taught as
exercises in geometrical drawing, until the figure has become thoroughly
familiar; it will then be an agreeable advance to be taught the logical
connections of the various lines or circles that occur. It is desirable also
that the figure illustrating a theorem should be drawn in all possible
cases and shapes, that so the abstract relations with which geometry is
concerned may of themselves emerge as the residue of similarity amid
such great apparent diversity. In this way the abstract demonstrations
should form but a small part of the instruction, and should be given
when, by familiarity with concrete illustrations, they have come to be
felt as the natural embodiment of visible fact. In this early stage proofs
should not be given with pedantic fullness; definitely fallacious methods,
such as that of superposition, should be rigidly excluded from the first,
but where, without such methods, the proof would be very difficult, the
result should be rendered acceptable by arguments and illustrations which
are explicitly contrasted with demonstrations.
In the beginning of algebra, even the most intelligent child finds, as
a rule, very great difficulty. The use of letters is a mystery, which seems
to have no purpose except mystification. It is almost impossible, at first,
not to think that every letter stands for some particular number, if only
the teacher would reveal what number it stands for. The fact is that in
algebra the mind is first taught to consider general truths, truths which
are not asserted to hold only of this or that particular thing, but of any
one of a whole group of things. It is in the power of understanding and
discovering such truths that the mastery of the intellect over the whole
world of things actual and possible resides; and ability to deal with the
general as such is one of the gifts that a mathematical education should
bestow. But how little, as a rule, is the teacher of algebra able to explain
the chasm which divides it from arithmetic, and how little is the learner
assisted in his groping efforts at comprehension! Usually the method
that has been adopted in arithmetic is continued: rules are set forth,
with no adequate explanation of their grounds; the pupil learns to use
88 Bertrand Russell

the rules blindly, and presently, when he is able to obtain the answer
that the teacher desires, he feels that he has mastered the difficulties of
the subject. But of inner comprehension of the processes employed he
has probably acquired almost nothing.
When algebra has been learnt, all goes smoothly until we reach those
studies in which the notion of infinity is employed—the infinitesimal
calculus and the whole of higher mathematics. The solution of the
difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is
probably the greatest achievement of which our own age has to boast.
Since the beginnings of Greek thought these difficulties have been known;
in every age the finest intellects have vainly endeavoured to answer the
apparently unanswerable questions that had been asked by Zeno the
Eleatic. At last Georg Cantor has found the answer, and has conquered
for the intellect a new and vast province which had been given over to
Chaos and old Night. It was assumed as self-evident, until Cantor and
Dedekind established the opposite, that if, from any collection of things,
some were taken away, the number of things left must always be less
than the original number of things. This assumption, as a matter of fact,
holds only of finite collections; and the rejection of it, where the infinite
is concerned, has been shown to remove all the difficulties that had
hitherto baffled human reason in this matter, and to render possible the
creation of an exact science of the infinite. This stupendous fact ought
to produce a revolution in the higher teaching of mathematics; it has
itself added immeasurably to the educational value of the subject, and it
has at last given the means of treating with logical precision many studies
which, until lately, were wrapped in fallacy and obscurity. By those who
were educated on the old lines, the new work is considered to be
appallingly difficult, abstruse, and obscure; and it must be confessed
that the discoverer, as is so often the case, has hardly himself emerged
from the mists which the light of his intellect is dispelling. But inherently,
the new doctrine of the infinite, to all candid and inquiring minds, has
facilitated the mastery of higher mathematics; for hitherto, it has been
necessary to learn, by a long process of sophistication, to give assent to
arguments which, on first acquaintance, were rightly judged to be
confused and erroneous. So far from producing a fearless belief in reason,
a bold rejection of whatever failed to fulfil the strictest requirements of
logic, a mathematical training, during the past two centuries, encouraged
the belief that many things, which a rigid inquiry would reject as fallacious,
must yet be accepted because they work in what the mathematician calls
“practice.” By this means, a timid, compromising spirit, or else a sacer-
 TH E STU DY OF MATH E MATICS 89

dotal belief in mysteries not intelligible to the profane, has been bred
where reason alone should have ruled. All this it is now time to sweep
away; let those who wish to penetrate into the arcana of mathematics be
taught at once the true theory in all its logical purity, and in the
concatenation established by the very essence of the entities concerned.
If we are considering mathematics as an end in itself, and not as a
technical training for engineers, it is very desirable to preserve the purity
and strictness of its reasoning. Accordingly those who have attained a
sufficient familiarity with its easier portions should be led backward
from propositions to which they have assented as self-evident to more
and more fundamental principles from which what had previously
appeared as premises can be deduced. They should be taught—what the
theory of infinity very aptly illustrates—that many propositions seem self-
evident to the untrained mind which, nevertheless, a nearer scrutiny
shows to be false. By this means they will be led to a sceptical inquiry
into first principles, an examination of the foundations upon which the
whole edifice of reasoning is built, or, to take perhaps a more fitting
metaphor, the great trunk from which the spreading branches spring. At
this stage, it is well to study afresh the elementary portions of mathematics,
asking no longer merely whether a given proposition is true, but also how
it grows out of the central principles of logic. Questions of this nature can
now be answered with a precision and certainty which were formerly
quite impossible; and in the chains of reasoning that the answer requires
the unity of all mathematical studies at last unfolds itself.
In the great majority of mathematical text-books there is a total lack of
unity in method and of systematic development of a central theme.
Propositions of very diverse kinds are proved by whatever means are
thought most easily intelligible, and much space is devoted to mere
curiosities which in no way contribute to the main argument. But in the
greatest works, unity and inevitability are felt as in the unfolding of a
drama; in the premisses a subject is proposed for consideration, and in
every subsequent step some definite advance is made towards mastery of
its nature. The love of system, of interconnection, which is perhaps the
inmost essence of the intellectual impulse, can find free play in
mathematics as nowhere else. The learner who feels this impulse must
not be repelled by an array of meaningless examples or distracted by
amusing oddities, but must be encouraged to dwell upon central principles,
to become familiar with the structure of the various subjects which are put
before him, to travel easily over the steps of the more important deductions.
In this way a good tone of mind is cultivated, and selective atten-
90 Bertrand Russell

tion is taught to dwell by preference upon what is weighty and essential.

When the separate studies into which mathematics is divided have
each been viewed as a logical whole, as a natural growth from the
propositions which constitute their principles, the learner will be able to
understand the fundamental science which unifies and systematizes the
whole of deductive reasoning. This is symbolic logic—a study which,
though it owes its inception to Aristotle, is yet, in its wider developments,
a product, almost wholly, of the nineteenth century, and is indeed, in the
present day, still growing with great rapidity. The true method of discovery
in symbolic logic, and probably also the best method for introducing the
study to a learner acquainted with other parts of mathematics, is the analysis
of actual examples of deductive reasoning, with a view to the discovery of
the principles employed. These principles, for the most part, are so
embedded in our ratiocinative instincts that they are employed quite
unconsciously, and can be dragged to light only by much patient effort.
But when at last they have been found, they are seen to be few in number,
and to be the sole source of everything in pure mathematics. The discovery
that all mathematics follows inevitably from a small collection of
fundamental laws is one which immeasurably enhances the intellectual
beauty of the whole; to those who have been oppressed by the fragmentary
and incomplete nature of most existing chains of deduction this discovery
comes with all the overwhelming force of a revelation; like a palace
emerging from the autumn mist as the traveller ascends an Italian hill-
side, the stately storeys of the mathematical edifice appear in their due
order and proportion, with a new perfection in every part.
Until symbolic logic had acquired its present development, the
principles upon which mathematics depends were always supposed to be
philosophical, and discoverable only by the uncertain, unprogressive
methods hitherto employed by philosophers. So long as this was thought,
mathematics seemed to be not autonomous, but dependent upon a study
which had quite other methods than its own. Moreover, since the nature
of the postulates from which arithmetic, analysis, and geometry are to be
deduced was wrapped in all the traditional obscurities of metaphysical
discussion, the edifice built upon such dubious foundations began to be
viewed as no better than a castle in the air. In this respect, the discovery
that the true principles are as much a part of mathematics as any of their
consequences has very greatly increased the intellectual satisfaction to
be obtained. This satisfaction ought not to be refused to learners capable
of enjoying it, for it is of a kind to increase our respect for human powers
and our knowledge of the beauties belonging to the abstract world.
 TH E STU DY OF MATH E MATICS 91

Philosophers have commonly held that the laws of logic, which

underlie mathematics, are laws of thought, laws regulating the operations
of our minds. By this opinion the true dignity of reason is very greatly
lowered; it ceases to be an investigation into the very heart and immutable
essence of all things actual and possible, becoming, instead, an inquiry
into something more or less human and subject to our limitations. The
contemplation of what is non-human, the discovery that our minds are
capable of dealing with material not created by them, above all, the
realization that beauty belongs to the outer world as to the inner are the
chief means of overcoming the terrible sense of impotence, of weakness,
of exile amid hostile powers, which is too apt to result from acknowledging
the all but omnipotence of alien forces. To reconcile us, by the exhibition
of its awful beauty, to the reign of Fate—which is merely the literary
personification of these forces—is the task of tragedy. But mathematics
takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute
necessity, to which not only the actual world, but every possible world,
must conform; and even here it builds a habitation, or rather finds a
habitation eternally standing, where our ideals are fully satisfied and
our best hopes are not thwarted. It is only when we thoroughly understand
the entire independence of ourselves, which belongs to this world that
reason finds, that we can adequately realize the profound importance of
its beauty.
Not only is mathematics independent of us and our thoughts, but in
another sense we and the whole universe of existing things are independent
of mathematics. The apprehension of this purely ideal character is
indispensable, if we are to understand rightly the place of mathematics as
one among the arts. It was formerly supposed that pure reason could decide,
in some respects, as to the nature of the actual world: geometry, at least,
was thought to deal with the space in which we live. But we now know
that pure mathematics can never pronounce upon questions of actual
existence: the world of reason, in a sense, controls the world of fact, but it
is not at any point creative of fact, and in the application of its results to
the world in time and space, its certainty and precision are lost among
approximations and working hypotheses. The objects considered by
mathematicians have, in the past, been mainly of a kind suggested by
phenomena; but from such restrictions the abstract imagination should be
wholly free. A reciprocal liberty must thus be accorded: reason cannot
dictate to the world of facts, but the facts cannot restrict reason’s
privilege of dealing with whatever objects its love of beauty may cause
to seem worthy of consideration. Here, as elsewhere, we build up our
92 Bertrand Russell

own ideals out of the fragments to be found in the world; and in the end
it is hard to say whether the result is a creation or a discovery.
It is very desirable, in instruction, not merely to persuade the student
of the accuracy of important theorems, but to persuade him in the way
which itself has, of all possible ways, the most beauty. The true interest
of a demonstration is not, as traditional modes of exposition suggest,
concentrated wholly in the result; where this does occur, it must be
viewed as a defect, to be remedied, if possible, by so generalizing the
steps of the proof that each becomes important in and for itself. An
argument which serves only to prove a conclusion is like a story
subordinated to some moral which it is meant to teach: for aesthetic
perfection no part of the whole should be merely a means. A certain
practical spirit, a desire for rapid progress, for conquest of new realms, is
responsible for the undue emphasis upon results which prevails in
mathematical instruction. The better way is to propose some theme for
consideration—in geometry, a figure having important properties; in
analysis, a function of which the study is illuminating, and so on.
Whenever proofs depend upon some only of the marks by which we
define the object to be studied, these marks should be isolated and
investigated on their own account. For it is a defect, in an argument, to
employ more premisses than the conclusion demands: what
mathematicians call elegance results from employing only the essential
principles in virtue of which the thesis is true. It is a merit in Euclid
that he advances as far as he is able to go without employing the axiom
of parallels—not, as is often said, because this axiom is inherently
objectionable, but because, in mathematics, every new axiom diminishes
the generality of the resulting theorems, and the greatest possible
generality is before all things to be sought.
Of the effects of mathematics outside its own sphere more has been
written than on the subject of its own proper ideal. The effect upon
philosophy has, in the past, been most notable, but most varied; in the
seventeenth century, idealism and rationalism, in the eighteenth,
materialism and sensationalism, seemed equally its offspring. Of the effect
which it is likely to have in the future it would be very rash to say much;
but in one respect a good result appears probable. Against that kind of
scepticism which abandons the pursuit of ideals because the road is arduous
and the goal not certainly attainable, mathematics, within its own sphere,
is a complete answer. Too often it is said that there is no absolute truth,
but only opinion and private judgment; that each of us is conditioned, in
his view of the world, by his own peculiarities, his own taste and bias; that
 TH E STU DY OF MATH E MATICS 93

there is no external kingdom of truth to which, by patience and discipline,

we may at last obtain admittance, but only truth for me, for you, for
every separate person. By this habit of mind one of the chief ends of
human effort is denied, and the supreme virtue of candour, of fearless
acknowledgment of what is, disappears from our moral vision. Of such
scepticism mathematics is a perpetual reproof; for its edifice of truths
stands unshakeable and inexpugnable to all the weapons of doubting
cynicism.
The effects of mathematics upon practical life, though they should
not be regarded as the motive of our studies, may be used to answer a
doubt to which the solitary student must always be liable. In a world so
full of evil and suffering, retirement into the cloister of contemplation,
to the enjoyment of delights which, however noble, must always be for
the few only, cannot but appear as a somewhat selfish refusal to share
the burden imposed upon others by accidents in which justice plays no
part. Have any of us the right, we ask, to withdraw from present evils, to
leave our fellow-men unaided, while we live a life which, though
arduous and austere, is yet plainly good in its own nature? When these
questions arise, the true answer is, no doubt, that some must keep alive
the sacred fire, some must preserve, in every generation, the haunting
vision which shadows forth the goal of so much striving. But when, as
must sometimes occur, this answer seems too cold, when we are almost
maddened by the spectacle of sorrows to which we bring no help, then
we may reflect that indirectly the mathematician often does more for
human happiness than any of his more practically active contem-
poraries. The history of science abundantly proves that a body of
abstract propositions—even if, as in the case of conic sections, it remains
two thousand years without effect upon daily life—may yet, at any
moment, be used to cause a revolution in the habitual thoughts and
occupations of every citizen. The use of steam and electricity—to take
striking instances—is rendered possible only by mathematics. In the
results of abstract thought the world possesses a capital of which the
employment in enriching the common round has no hitherto
discoverable limits. Nor does experience give any means of deciding
what parts of mathematics will be found useful. Utility, therefore, can
be only a consolation in moments of discouragement, not a guide in
directing our studies.
For the health of the moral life, for ennobling the tone of an age or a
nation, the austerer virtues have a strange power, exceeding the power of
those not informed and purified by thought. Of these austerer virtues the
94 Bertrand Russell

love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the
love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study
is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining
a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view
throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
 Mathematics and
the Metaphysicians

he nineteenth century, which prided itself upon the invention

of steam and evolution, might have derived a more legitimate title to
fame from the discovery of pure mathematics. This science, like most
others, was baptised long before it was born; and thus we find writers
before the nineteenth century alluding to what they called pure
mathematics. But if they had been asked what this subject was, they
would only have been able to say that it consisted of Arithmetic, Algebra,
Geometry, and so on. As to what these studies had in common, and as
to what distinguished them from applied mathematics, our ancestors
were completely in the dark.
Pure mathematics was discovered by Boole, in a work which he called
the Laws of Thought (1854). This work abounds in asseverations that it is
not mathematical, the fact being that Boole was too modest to suppose
his book the first ever written on mathematics. He was also mistaken in
supposing that he was dealing with the laws of thought: the question
how people actually think was quite irrelevant to him, and if his book
had really contained the laws of thought, it was curious that no one
should ever have thought in such a way before. His book was in fact
concerned with formal logic, and this is the same thing as mathematics.
Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if
such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such
another proposition is true of that thing. It is essential not to discuss
whether the first proposition is really true, and not to mention what the
anything is, of which it is supposed to be true. Both these points would
belong to applied mathematics. We start, in pure mathematics, from certain
rules of inference, by which we can infer that if one proposition is true,
then so is some other proposition. These rules of inference constitute
the major part of the principles of formal logic. We then take any
hypothesis that seems amusing, and deduce its consequences. If our
95
96 Bertrand Russell

hypothesis is about anything, and not about some one or more particular
things, then our deductions constitute mathematics. Thus mathematics
may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are
talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. People who have
been puzzled by the beginnings of mathematics will, I hope, find comfort
in this definition, and will probably agree that it is accurate.
As one of the chief triumphs of modern mathematics consists in having
discovered what mathematics really is, a few more words on this subject
may not be amiss. It is common to start any branch of mathematics—for
instance, Geometry—with a certain number of primitive ideas, supposed
incapable of definition, and a certain number of primitive propositions
or axioms, supposed incapable of proof. Now the fact is that, though
there are indefinables and indemonstrables in every branch of applied
mathematics, there are none in pure mathematics except such as belong
to general logic. Logic, broadly speaking, is distinguished by the fact
that its propositions can be put into a form in which they apply to anything
whatever. All pure mathematics—Arithmetic, Analysis, and Geometry—
is built up by combinations of the primitive ideas of logic, and its
propositions are deduced from the general axioms of logic, such as the
syllogism and the other rules of inference. And this is no longer a dream
or an aspiration. On the contrary, over the greater and more difficult
part of the domain of mathematics, it has been already accomplished; in
the few remaining cases, there is no special difficulty, and it is now
being rapidly achieved. Philosophers have disputed for ages whether
such deduction was possible; mathematicians have sat down and made
the deduction. For the philosophers there is now nothing left but graceful
acknowledgments.
The subject of formal logic, which has thus at last shown itself to be
identical with mathematics, was, as every one knows, invented by
Aristotle, and formed the chief study (other than theology) of the Middle
Ages. But Aristotle never got beyond the syllogism, which is a very
small part of the subject, and the schoolmen never got beyond Aristotle.
If any proof were required of our superiority to the mediaeval doctors, it
might be found in this. Throughout the Middle Ages, almost all the best
intellects devoted themselves to formal logic, whereas in the nineteenth
century only an infinitesimal proportion of the world’s thought went into
this subject. Nevertheless, in each decade since 1850 more has been done
to advance the subject than in the whole period from Aristotle to Leibniz.
People have discovered how to make reasoning symbolic, as it is in Algebra,
so that deductions are effected by mathematical rules. They have
 MATH E MATICS AN D TH E M ETAPHYS ICIAN S 97

discovered many rules besides the syllogism, and a new branch of logic,
called the Logic of Relatives,1 has been invented to deal with topics that
wholly surpassed the powers of the old logic, though they form the
chief contents of mathematics.
It is not easy for the lay mind to realize the importance of symbolism
in discussing the foundations of mathematics, and the explanation may
perhaps seem strangely paradoxical. The fact is that symbolism is useful
because it makes things difficult. (This is not true of the advanced parts
of mathematics, but only of the beginnings.) What we wish to know is,
what can be deduced from what. Now, in the beginnings, everything is
self-evident; and it is very hard to see whether one self-evident proposition
follows from another or not. Obviousness is always the enemy to
correctness. Hence we invent some new and difficult symbolism, in which
nothing seems obvious. Then we set up certain rules for operating on
the symbols, and the whole thing becomes mechanical. In this way we
find out what must be taken as premiss and what can be demonstrated or
defined. For instance, the whole of Arithmetic and Algebra has been
shown to require three indefinable notions and five indemonstrable
propositions. But without a symbolism it would have been very hard to
find this out. It is so obvious that two and two are four, that we can
hardly make ourselves sufficiently sceptical to doubt whether it can be
proved. And the same holds in other cases where self-evident things are
to be proved.
But the proof of self-evident propositions may seem, to the uninitiated,
a somewhat frivolous occupation. To this we might reply that it is often
by no means self-evident that one obvious proposition follows from
another obvious proposition; so that we are really discovering new truths
when we prove what is evident by a method which is not evident. But a
more interesting retort is that, since people have tried to prove obvious
propositions, they have found that many of them are false. Self-evidence
is often a mere will-o’-the-wisp, which is sure to lead us astray if we take
it as our guide. For instance, nothing is plainer than that a whole always
has more terms than a part, or that a number is increased by adding one
to it. But these propositions are now known to be usually false. Most
numbers are infinite, and if a number is infinite you may add ones to it
as long as you like without disturbing it in the least. One of the merits
of a proof is that it instils a certain doubt as to the result proved; and
when what is obvious can be proved in some cases, but not in others, it
becomes possible to suppose that in these other cases it is false.
1. This subject is due in the main to Mr. C. S. Peirce.
98 Bertrand Russell

The great master of the art of formal reasoning, among the men of our
own day, is an Italian, Professor Peano, of the University of Turin.2 He
has reduced the greater part of mathematics (and he or his followers
will, in time, have reduced the whole) to strict symbolic form, in which
there are no words at all. In the ordinary mathematical books, there are
no doubt fewer words than most readers would wish. Still, little phrases
occur, such as therefore, let us assume, consider, or hence it follows. All these,
however, are a concession, and are swept away by Professor Peano. For
instance, if we wish to learn the whole of Arithmetic, Algebra, the
Calculus, and indeed all that is usually called pure mathematics (except
Geometry), we must start with a dictionary of three words. One symbol
stands for zero, another for number, and a third for next after. What these
ideas mean, it is necessary to know if you wish to become an
arithmetician. But after symbols have been invented for these three ideas,
not another word is required in the whole development. All future symbols
are symbolically explained by means of these three. Even these three can
be explained by means of the notions of relation and class; but this requires
the Logic of Relations, which Professor Peano has never taken up. It
must be admitted that what a mathematician has to know to begin with
is not much. There are at most a dozen notions out of which all the
notions in all pure mathematics (including Geometry) are compounded.
Professor Peano, who is assisted by a very able school of young Italian
disciples, has shown how this may be done; and although the method
which he has invented is capable of being carried a good deal further
than he has carried it, the honour of the pioneer must belong to him.
Two hundred years ago, Leibniz foresaw the science which Peano has
perfected, and endeavoured to create it. He was prevented from
succeeding by respect for the authority of Aristotle, whom he could not
believe guilty of definite, formal fallacies; but the subject which he desired
to create now exists, in spite of the patronizing contempt with which his
schemes have been treated by all superior persons. From this “Universal
Characteristic,” as he called it, he hoped for a solution of all problems,
and an end to all disputes. “If controversies were to arise,” he says, “there
would be no more need of disputation between two philosophers than
between two accountants. For it would suffice to take their pens in
their hands, to sit down to their desks, and to say to each other (with a
friend as witness, if they liked), ‘Let us calculate.’ ” This optimism has
now appeared to be somewhat excessive; there still are problems whose
2. I ought to have added Frege, but his writings were unknown to me when this article was
written. [Note added in 1917.]
 MATH E MATICS AN D TH E M ETAPHYS ICIAN S 99

solution is doubtful, and disputes which calculation cannot decide. But

over an enormous field of what was formerly controversial, Leibniz’s
dream has become sober fact. In the whole philosophy of mathematics,
which used to be at least as full of doubt as any other part of philosophy,
order and certainty have replaced the confusion and hesitation which
formerly reigned. Philosophers, of course, have not yet discovered this
fact, and continue to write on such subjects in the old way. But
mathematicians, at least in Italy, have now the power of treating the
principles of mathematics in an exact and masterly manner, by means of
which the certainty of mathematics extends also to mathematical
philosophy. Hence many of the topics which used to be placed among the
great mysteries—for example, the natures of infinity, of continuity, of space,
time and motion—are now no longer in any degree open to doubt or
discussion. Those who wish to know the nature of these things need only
read the works of such men as Peano or Georg Cantor; they will there
find exact and indubitable expositions of all these quondam mysteries.
In this capricious world, nothing is more capricious than posthumous
fame. One of the most notable examples of posterity’s lack of judgment
is the Eleatic Zeno. This man, who may be regarded as the founder of
the philosophy of infinity, appears in Plato’s Parmenides in the privileged
position of instructor to Socrates. He invented four arguments, all
immeasurably subtle and profound, to prove that motion is impossible,
that Achilles can never overtake the tortoise, and that an arrow in flight
is really at rest. After being refuted by Aristotle, and by every subsequent
philosopher from that day to our own, these arguments were reinstated,
and made the basis of a mathematical renaissance, by a German professor,
who probably never dreamed of any connection between himself and
Zeno. Weierstrass,3 by strictly banishing from mathematics the use of
infinitesimals, has at last shown that we live in an unchanging world,
and that the arrow in its flight is truly at rest. Zeno’s only error lay in
inferring (if he did infer) that, because there is no such thing as a state
of change, therefore the world is in the same state at any one time as at
any other. This is a consequence which by no means follows; and in this
respect, the German mathematician is more constructive than the ingenious
Greek. Weierstrass has been able, by embodying his views in mathematics,
where familiarity with truth eliminates the vulgar prejudices of common
sense, to invest Zeno’s paradoxes with the respectable air of platitudes;
and if the result is less delightful to the lover of reason than Zeno’s

3. Professor of mathematics in the University of Berlin. He died in 1897.

100 Bertrand Russell

bold defiance, it is at any rate more calculated to appease the mass of

academic mankind.
Zeno was concerned, as a matter of fact, with three problems, each
presented by motion, but each more abstract than motion, and capable
of a purely arithmetical treatment. These are the problems of the
infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity. To state clearly the difficulties
involved was to accomplish perhaps the hardest part of the philosopher’s
task. This was done by Zeno. From him to our own day, the finest
intellects of each generation in turn attacked the problems, but achieved,
broadly speaking, nothing. In our own time, however, three men—
Weierstrass, Dedekind, and Cantor—have not merely advanced the three
problems, but have completely solved them. The solutions, for those
acquainted with mathematics, are so clear as to leave no longer the
slightest doubt or difficulty. This achievement is probably the greatest
of which our age has to boast; and I know of no age (except perhaps the
golden age of Greece) which has a more convincing proof to offer of the
transcendent genius of its great men. Of the three problems, that of the
infinitesimal was solved by Weierstrass; the solution of the other two
was begun by Dedekind, and definitively accomplished by Cantor.
The infinitesimal played formerly a great part in mathematics. It was
introduced by the Greeks, who reg arded a circle as differing
infinitesimally from a polygon with a very large number of very small
equal sides. It gradually grew in importance, until, when Leibniz
invented the Infinitesimal Calculus, it seemed to become the fundamental
notion of all higher mathematics. Carryle tells, in his Frederick the Great,
how Leibniz used to discourse to Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia
concerning the infinitely little, and how she would reply that on that
subject she needed no instruction—the behaviour of courtiers had made
her thoroughly familiar with it. But philosophers and mathematicians—
who for the most part had less acquaintance with courts—continued to
discuss this topic, though without making any advance. The Calculus
required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely
little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be. It was
plainly not quite zero, because a sufficiently large number of infinitesimals,
added together, were seen to make up a finite whole. But nobody could
point out any fraction which was not zero, and yet not finite. Thus there
was a deadlock. But at last Weierstrass discovered that the infinitesimal
was not needed at all, and that everything could be accomplished without
it. Thus there was no longer any need to suppose that there was such a
thing. Nowadays, therefore, mathematicians are more dignified than
 MATH E MATICS AN D TH E M ETAPHYS ICIAN S 101

Leibniz: instead of talking about the infinitely small, they talk about the
infinitely great—a subject which, however appropriate to monarchs, seems,
unfortunately, to interest them even less than the infinitely little interested
the monarchs to whom Leibniz discoursed.
The banishment of the infinitesimal has all sorts of odd consequences,
to which one has to become gradually accustomed. For example, there is
no such thing as the next moment. The interval between one moment
and the next would have to be infinitesimal, since, if we take two moments
with a finite interval between them, there are always other moments in
the interval. Thus if there are to be no infinitesimals, no two moments
are quite consecutive, but there are always other moments between any
two. Hence there must be an infinite number of moments between any
two; because if there were a finite number one would be nearest the first
of the two moments, and therefore next to it. This might be thought to
be a difficulty; but, as a matter of fact, it is here that the philosophy of
the infinite comes in, and makes all straight.
The same sort of thing happens in space. If any piece of matter be cut
in two, and then each part be halved, and so on, the bits will become
smaller and smaller, and can theoretically be made as small as we please.
However small they may be, they can still be cut up and made smaller
still. But they will always have some finite size, however small they may
be. We never reach the infinitesimal in this way, and no finite number
of divisions will bring us to points. Nevertheless there are points, only
these are not to be reached by successive divisions. Here again, the
philosophy of the infinite shows us how this is possible, and why points
are not infinitesimal lengths.
As regards motion and change, we get similarly curious results. People
used to think that when a thing changes, it must be in a state of change,
and that when a thing moves, it is in a state of motion. This is now
known to be a mistake. When a body moves, all that can be said is that
it is in one place at one time and in another at another. We must not say
that it will be in a neighbouring place at the next instant, since there is
no next instant. Philosophers often tell us that when a body is in motion,
it changes its position within the instant. To this view Zeno long ago
made the fatal retort that every body always is where it is; but a retort so
simple and brief was not of the kind to which philosophers are accustomed
to give weight, and they have continued down to our own day to repeat
the same phrases which roused the Eleatic’s destructive ardour. It was
only recently that it became possible to explain motion in detail in
accordance with Zeno’s platitude, and in opposition to the philosopher’s
102 Bertrand Russell

paradox. We may now at last indulge the comfortable belief that a body
in motion is just as truly where it is as a body at rest. Motion consists
merely in the fact that bodies are sometimes in one place and sometimes
in another, and that they are at intermediate places at intermediate times.
Only those who have waded through the quagmire of philosophic
speculation on this subject can realize what a liberation from antique
prejudices is involved in this simple and straightforward commonplace.
The philosophy of the infinitesimal, as we have just seen, is mainly
negative. People used to believe in it, and now they have found out
their mistake. The philosophy of the infinite, on the other hand, is
wholly positive. It was formerly supposed that infinite numbers, and the
mathematical infinite generally, were self-contradictory. But as it was
obvious that there were infinities—for example, the number of numbers—
the contradictions of infinity seemed unavoidable, and philosophy seemed
to have wandered into a cul-de-sac. This difficulty led to Kant’s
antinomies, and hence, more or less indirectly, to much of Hegel’s
dialectic method. Almost all current philosophy is upset by the fact (of
which very few philosophers are as yet aware) that all the ancient and
respectable contradictions in the notion of the infinite have been once
for all disposed of. The method by which this has been done is most
interesting and instructive. In the first place, though people had talked
glibly about infinity ever since the beginnings of Greek thought, nobody
had ever thought of asking, What is infinity? If any philosopher had
been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some
unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to
give a definition that had any meaning at all. Twenty years ago, roughly
speaking, Dedekind and Cantor asked this question, and, what is more
remarkable, they answered it. They found, that is to say, a perfectly
precise definition of an infinite number or an infinite collection of things.
This was the first and perhaps the greatest step. It then remained to
examine the supposed contradictions in this notion. Here Cantor
proceeded in the only proper way. He took pairs of contradictory
propositions, in which both sides of the contradiction would be usually
regarded as demonstrable, and he strictly examined the supposed proofs.
He found that all proofs adverse to infinity involved a certain principle,
at first sight obviously true, but destructive, in its consequences, of almost
all mathematics. The proofs favourable to infinity, on the other hand,
involved no principle that had evil consequences. It thus appeared that
common sense had allowed itself to be taken in by a specious maxim,
and that, when once this maxim was rejected, all went well.
 MATH E MATICS AN D TH E M ETAPHYS ICIAN S 103

The maxim in question is that, if one collection is part of another, the

one which is a part has fewer terms than the one of which it is a part. This
maxim is true of finite numbers. For example, Englishmen are only some
among Europeans, and there are fewer Englishmen than Europeans. But
when we come to infinite numbers, this is no longer true. This breakdown
of the maxim gives us the precise definition of infinity. A collection of
terms is infinite when it contains as parts other collections which have
just as many terms as it has. If you can take away some of the terms of a
collection without diminishing the number of terms, then there are an
infinite number of terms in the collection. For example, there are just as
many even numbers as there are numbers altogether, since every number
can be doubled. This may be seen by putting odd and even numbers
together in one row, and even numbers alone in a row below:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ad infinitum.
2, 4, 6, 8, 10, ad infinitum.

There are obviously just as many numbers in the row below as in the
row above, because there is one below for each one above. This property,
which was formerly thought to be a contradiction, is now transformed
into a harmless definition of infinity, and shows, in the above case, that
the number of finite numbers is infinite.
But the uninitiated may wonder how it is possible to deal with a
number which cannot be counted. It is impossible to count up all the
numbers, one by one, because, however many we may count, there are
always more to follow. The fact is that counting is a very vulgar and
elementary way of finding out how many terms there are in a collection.
And in any case, counting gives us what mathematicians call the ordinal
number of our terms; that is to say, it arranges our terms in an order or
series, and its result tells us what type of series results from this
arrangement. In other words, it is impossible to count things without
counting some first and others afterwards, so that counting always has
to do with order. Now when there are only a finite number of terms, we
can count them in any order we like; but when there are an infinite
number, what corresponds to counting will give us quite different results
according to the way in which we carry out the operation. Thus the
ordinal number, which results from what, in a general sense, may be
called counting, depends not only upon how many terms we have, but
also (where the number of terms is infinite) upon the way in which the
terms are arranged.
The fundamental infinite numbers are not ordinal, but are what is
104 Bertrand Russell

called cardinal. They are not obtained by putting our terms in order and
counting them, but by a different method, which tells us, to begin with,
whether two collections have the same number of terms, or, if not, which
is the greater.4 It does not tell us, in the way in which counting does,
what number of terms a collection has; but if we define a number as the
number of terms in such and such a collection, then this method enables
us to discover whether some other collection that may be mentioned has
more or fewer terms. An illustration will show how this is done. If there
existed some country in which, for one reason or another, it was
impossible to take a census, but in which it was known that every man
had a wife and every woman a husband, then (provided polygamy was
not a national institution) we should know, without counting, that there
were exactly as many men as there were women in that country, neither
more nor less. This method can be applied generally. If there is some
relation which, like marriage, connects the things in one collection each
with one of the things in another collection, and vice versa, then the two
collections have the same number of terms. This was the way in which we
found that there are as many even numbers as there are numbers. Every
number can be doubled, and every even number can be halved, and each
process gives just one number corresponding to the one that is doubled or
halved. And in this way we can find any number of collections each of
which has just as many terms as there are finite numbers. If every term of
a collection can be hooked on to a number, and all the finite numbers are
used once, and only once, in the process, then our collection must have
just as many terms as there are finite numbers. This is the general method
by which the numbers of infinite collections are defined.
But it must not be supposed that all infinite numbers are equal. On
the contrary, there are infinitely more infinite numbers than finite ones.
There are more ways of arranging the finite numbers in different types
of series than there are finite numbers. There are probably more points
in space and more moments in time than there are finite numbers. There
are exactly as many fractions as whole numbers, although there are an
infinite number of fractions between any two whole numbers. But there
are more irrational numbers than there are whole numbers or fractions.
There are probably exactly as many points in space as there are irrational
numbers, and exactly as many points on a line a millionth of an inch long
as in the whole of infinite space. There is a greatest of all infinite num-
bers, which is the number of things altogether, of every sort and kind.

4. Although some infinite numbers are greater than some others, it cannot be proved that
of any two infinite numbers one must be the greater. [Note added in 1917.]
 MATH E MATICS AN D TH E M ETAPHYS ICIAN S 105

It is obvious that there cannot be a greater number than this, because, if

everything has been taken, there is nothing left to add. Cantor has a
proof that there is no greatest number, and if this proof were valid, the
contradictions of infinity would reappear in a sublimated form. But in
this one point, the master has been guilty of a very subtle fallacy, which
I hope to explain in some future work.5
We can now understand why Zeno believed that Achilles cannot
overtake the tortoise and why as a matter of fact he can overtake it. We
shall see that all the people who disagreed with Zeno had no right to do
so, because they all accepted premisses from which his conclusion
followed. The argument is this: Let Achilles and the tortoise start along
a road at the same time, the tortoise (as is only fair) being allowed a
handicap. Let Achilles go twice as fast as the tortoise, or ten times or a
hundred times as fast. Then he will never reach the tortoise. For at
every moment the tortoise is somewhere and Achilles is somewhere; and
neither is ever twice in the same place while the race is going on. Thus
the tortoise goes to just as many places as Achilles does, because each is
in one place at one moment, and in another at any other moment. But if
Achilles were to catch up with the tortoise, the places where the tortoise
would have been would be only part of the places where Achilles would
have been. Here, we must suppose, Zeno appealed to the maxim that the
whole has more terms than the part.6 Thus if Achilles were to overtake
the tortoise, he would have been in more places than the tortoise; but we
saw that he must, in any period, be in exactly as many places as the
tortoise. Hence we infer that he can never catch the tortoise. This
argument is strictly correct, if we allow the axiom that the whole has
more terms than the part. As the conclusion is absurd, the axiom must
be rejected, and then all goes well. But there is no good word to be said
for the philosophers of the past two thousand years and more, who have
all allowed the axiom and denied the conclusion.
The retention of this axiom leads to absolute contradictions, while its
rejection leads only to oddities. Some of these oddities, it must be
confessed, are very odd. One of them, which I call the paradox of Tristram

5. Cantor was not guilty of a fallacy on this point. His proof that there is no greatest
number is valid. The solution of the puzzle is complicated and depends upon the
theory of types, which is explained in Principia Mathematica, Vol. I (Cambridge University
Press, 1910). [Note added in 1917.]
6. This must not be regarded as a historically correct account of what Zeno actually had
in mind. It is a new argument for his conclusion, not the argument which influenced
him. On this point, see e.g. C. D. Broad, “Note on Achilles and the Tortoise,” Mind,
N.S., Vol. XXII, pp. 318–19. Much valuable work on the interpretation of Zeno has
been done since this article was written. [Note added in 1917.]
106 Bertrand Russell

Shandy, is the converse of the Achilles, and shows that the tortoise, if
you give him time, will go just as far as Achilles. Tristram Shandy, as we
know, employed two years in chronicling the first two days of his life,
and lamented that, at this rate, material would accumulate faster than he
could deal with it, so that, as years went by, he would be farther and
farther from the end of his history. Now I maintain that if he had lived
for ever, and had not wearied of his task, then, even if his life had
continued as eventfully as it began, no part of his biography would have
remained unwritten. For consider: the hundredth day will be described
in the hundredth year, the thousandth in the thousandth year, and so
on. Whatever day we may choose as so far on that he cannot hope to
reach it, that day will be described in the corresponding year. Thus any
day that may be mentioned will be written up sooner or later, and therefore
no part of the biography will remain permanently unwritten. This
paradoxical but perfectly true proposition depends upon the fact that the
number of days in all time is no greater than the number of years.
Thus on the subject of infinity it is impossible to avoid conclusions
which at first sight appear paradoxical, and this is the reason why so
many philosophers have supposed that there were inherent contradictions
in the infinite. But a little practice enables one to grasp the true principles
of Cantor’s doctrine, and to acquire new and better instincts as to the
true and the false. The oddities then become no odder than the people
at the antipodes, who used to be thought impossible because they would
find it so inconvenient to stand on their heads.
The solution of the problems concerning infinity has enabled Cantor
to solve also the problems of continuity. Of this, as of infinity, he has
given a perfectly precise definition, and has shown that there are no
contradictions in the notion so defined. But this subject is so technical
that it is impossible to give any account of it here.
The notion of continuity depends upon that of order, since continuity
is merely a particular type of order. Mathematics has, in modern times,
brought order into greater and greater prominence. In former days, it
was supposed (and philosophers are still apt to suppose) that quantity
was the fundamental notion of mathematics. But nowadays, quantity is
banished altogether, except from one little corner of Geometry, while
order more and more reigns supreme. The investigation of different
kinds of series and their relations is now a very large part of mathematics,
and it has been found that this investigation can be conducted without
any reference to quantity, and, for the most part, without any reference
to number. All types of series are capable of formal definition, and their
 MATH E MATICS AN D TH E M ETAPHYS ICIAN S 107

properties can be deduced from the principles of symbolic logic by means

of the Algebra of Relatives. The notion of a limit, which is fundamental
in the greater part of higher mathematics, used to be defined by means
of quantity, as a term to which the terms of some series approximate as
nearly as we please. But nowadays the limit is defined quite differently,
and the series which it limits may not approximate to it at all. This
improvement also is due to Cantor, and it is one which has revolutionized
mathematics. Only order is now relevant to limits. Thus, for instance,
the smallest of the infinite integers is the limit of the finite integers,
though all finite integers are at an infinite distance from it. The study of
different types of series is a general subject of which the study of ordinal
numbers (mentioned above) is a special and very interesting branch. But
the unavoidable technicalities of this subject render it impossible to explain
to any but professed mathematicians.
Geometry, like Arithmetic, has been subsumed, in recent times, under
the general study of order. It was formerly supposed that Geometry was
the study of the nature of the space in which we live, and accordingly it
was urged, by those who held that what exists can only be known
empirically, that Geometry should really be regarded as belonging to
applied mathematics. But it has gradually appeared, by the increase of
non-Euclidean systems, that Geometry throws no more light upon the
nature of space than Arithmetic throws upon the population of the United
States. Geometry is a whole collection of deductive sciences based on a
corresponding collection of sets of axioms. One set of axioms is Euclid’s;
other equally good sets of axioms lead to other results. Whether Euclid’s
axioms are true is a question as to which the pure mathematician is
indifferent; and, what is more, it is a question which it is theoretically
impossible to answer with certainty in the affirmative. It might possibly
be shown, by very careful measurements, that Euclid’s axioms are false;
but no measurements could ever assure us (owing to the errors of
observation) that they are exactly true. Thus the geometer leaves to the
man of science to decide, as best he may, what axioms are most nearly
true in the actual world. The geometer takes any set of axioms that seem
interesting, and deduces their consequences. What defines Geometry,
in this sense, is that the axioms must give rise to a series of more than
one dimension. And it is thus that Geometry becomes a department in
the study of order.
In Geometry, as in other parts of mathematics, Peano and his disciples
have done work of the very greatest merit as regards principles.
Formerly, it was held by philosophers and mathematicians alike that the
108 Bertrand Russell

proofs in Geometry depended on the figure; nowadays, this is known to

be false. In the best books there are no figures at all. The reasoning
proceeds by the strict rules of formal logic from a set of axioms laid
down to begin with. If a figure is used, all sorts of things seem obviously
to follow, which no formal reasoning can prove from the explicit axioms,
and which, as a matter of fact, are only accepted because they are obvious.
By banishing the figure, it becomes possible to discover all the axioms
that are needed; and in this way all sorts of possibilities, which would
have otherwise remained undetected, are brought to light.
One great advance, from the point of view of correctness, has been
made by introducing points as they are required, and not starting, as
was formerly done, by assuming the whole of space. This method is due
partly to Peano, partly to another Italian named Fano. To those
unaccustomed to it, it has an air of somewhat wilful pedantry. In this
way, we begin with the following axioms: (1) There is a class of entities
called points. (2) There is at least one point. (3) If a be a point, there is at
least one other point besides a. Then we bring in the straight line joining
two points, and begin again with (4), namely, on the straight line joining
a and b, there is at least one other point besides a and b. (5) There is at
least one point not on the line ab. And so we go on, till we have the
means of obtaining as many points as we require. But the word space, as
Peano humorously remarks, is one for which Geometry has no use at all.
The rigid methods employed by modern geometers have deposed
Euclid from his pinnacle of correctness. It was thought, until recent times,
that, as Sir Henry Savile remarked in 1621, there were only two blemishes
in Euclid, the theory of parallels and the theory of proportion. It is now
known that these are almost the only points in which Euclid is free from
blemish. Countless errors are involved in his first eight propositions.
That is to say, not only is it doubtful whether his axioms are true, which
is a comparatively trivial matter, but it is certain that his propositions do
not follow from the axioms which he enunciates. A vastly greater number
of axioms, which Euclid unconsciously employs, are required for the
proof of his propositions. Even in the first proposition of all, where he
constructs an equilateral triangle on a given base, he uses two circles
which are assumed to intersect. But no explicit axiom assures us that
they do so, and in some kinds of spaces they do not always intersect. It
is quite doubtful whether our space belongs to one of these kinds or not.
Thus Euclid fails entirely to prove his point in the very first proposition.
As he is certainly not an easy author, and is terribly long-winded, he
has no longer any but a historical interest. Under these circumstances,
 MATH E MATICS AN D TH E M ETAPHYS ICIAN S 109

it is nothing less than a scandal that he should still be taught to boys in

England.7 A book should have either intelligibility or correctness; to
combine the two is impossible, but to lack both is to be unworthy of
such a place as Euclid has occupied in education.
The most remarkable result of modern methods in mathematics is the
importance of symbolic logic and of rigid formalism. Mathematicians,
under the influence of Weierstrass, have shown in modern times a care
for accuracy, and an aversion to slipshod reasoning, such as had not been
known among them previously since the time of the Greeks. The great
inventions of the seventeenth century—Analytical Geometry and the
Infinitesimal Calculus—were so fruitful in new results that mathematicians
had neither time nor inclination to examine their foundations.
Philosophers, who should have taken up the task, had too little
mathematical ability to invent the new branches of mathematics which
have now been found necessary for any adequate discussion. Thus
mathematicians were only awakened from their “dogmatic slumbers” when
Weierstrass and his followers showed that many of their most cherished
propositions are in general false. Macaulay, contrasting the certainty of
mathematics with the uncertainty of philosophy, asks who ever heard of a
reaction against Taylor’s theorem? If he had lived now, he himself might
have heard of such a reaction, for this is precisely one of the theorems
which modern investigations have overthrown. Such rude shocks to
mathematical faith have produced that love of formalism which appears,
to those who are ignorant of its motive, to be mere outrageous pedantry.
The proof that all pure mathematics, including Geometry, is nothing
but formal logic, is a fatal blow to the Kantian philosophy. Kant, rightly
perceiving that Euclid’s propositions could not be deduced from Euclid’s
axioms without the help of the figures, invented a theory of knowledge
to account for this fact; and it accounted so successfully that, when the
fact is shown to be a mere defect in Euclid, and not a result of the nature
of geometrical reasoning, Kant’s theory also has to be abandoned. The
whole doctrine of a priori intuitions, by which Kant explained the
possibility of pure mathematics, is wholly inapplicable to mathematics
in its present form. The Aristotelian doctrines of the schoolmen come
nearer in spirit to the doctrines which modern mathematics inspire; but
the schoolmen were hampered by the fact that their formal logic was
very defective, and that the philosophical logic based upon the syllogism
7. Since the above was written, he has ceased to be used as a text-book. But I fear
many of the books now used are so bad that the change is no great improvement.
[Note added in 1917.]
110 Bertrand Russell

showed a corresponding narrowness. What is now required is to give

the greatest possible development to mathematical logic, to allow to the
full the importance of relations, and then to found upon this secure
basis a new philosophical logic, which may hope to borrow some of the
exactitude and certainty of its mathematical foundation. If this can be
successfully accomplished, there is every reason to hope that the near
future will be as great an epoch in pure philosophy as the immediate
past has been in the principles of mathematics. Great triumphs inspire
great hopes; and pure thought may achieve, within our generation, such
results as will place our time, in this respect, on a level with the greatest
age of Greece.8

8 . The greatest age of Greece was brought to an end by the Peloponnesian War.
[Note added in 1917.]

The foregoing consists of Chapters IV and V

from Russell’s MYSTICIS M AND LOGIC, AND OTHER ESSAYS.
 Definition of Number

he question “What is a number?” is one which has been often

asked, but has only been correctly answered in our own time. The answer
was given by Frege in 1884, in his Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Although
this book is quite short, not difficult, and of the very highest importance,
it attracted almost no attention, and the definition of number which it
contains remained practically unknown until it was rediscovered by the
present author in 1901.
In seeking a definition of number, the first thing to be clear about is
what we may call the grammar of our inquiry. Many philosophers, when
attempting to define number, are really setting to work to define plurality,
which is quite a different thing. Number is what is characteristic of numbers,
as man is what is characteristic of men. A plurality is not an instance of
number, but of some particular number. A trio of men, for example, is
an instance of the number 3, and the number 3 is an instance of number;
but the trio is not an instance of number. This point may seem elementary
and scarcely worth mentioning; yet it has proved too subtle for the
philosophers, with few exceptions.
A particular number is not identical with any collection of terms
having that number: the number 3 is not identical with the trio consisting
of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. The number 3 is something which all
trios have in common, and which distinguishes them from other
collections. A number is something that characterizes certain collections,
namely, those that have that number.
Instead of speaking of a “collection,” we shall as a rule speak of a
“class,” or sometimes a “set.” Other words used in mathematics for the
same thing are “aggregate” and “manifold.” We shall have much to say
later on about classes. For the present, we will say as little as possible.
But there are some remarks that must be made immediately.
A class or collection may be defined in two ways that at first sight
seem quite distinct. We may enumerate its members, as when we say,

111
112 Bertrand Russell

“The collection I mean is Brown, Jones, and Robinson.” Or we may

mention a defining property, as when we speak of “mankind” or “the
inhabitants of London.” The definition which enumerates is called a
definition by “extension,” and the one which mentions a defining property
is called a definition by “intension.” Of these two kinds of definition,
the one by intension is logically more fundamental. This is shown by
two considerations: (1) that the extensional definition can always be
reduced to an intensional one; (2) that the intensional one often cannot
even theoretically be reduced to the extensional one. Each of these points
needs a word of explanation.
(1) Brown, Jones, and Robinson all of them possess a certain property
which is possessed by nothing else in the whole universe, namely, the
property of being either Brown or Jones or Robinson. This property can
be used to give a definition by intension of the class consisting of Brown
and Jones and Robinson. Consider such a formula as “x is Brown or x is
Jones or x is Robinson.” This formula will be true for just three x’s,
namely, Brown and Jones and Robinson. In this respect it resembles a
cubic equation with its three roots. It may be taken as assigning a property
common to the members of the class consisting of these three men, and
peculiar to them. A similar treatment can obviously be applied to any
other class given in extension.
(2) It is obvious that in practice we can often know a great deal about
a class without being able to enumerate its members. No one man could
actually enumerate all men, or even all the inhabitants of London, yet a
great deal is known about each of these classes. This is enough to show
that definition by extension is not necessary to knowledge about a class.
But when we come to consider infinite classes, we find that enumeration
is not even theoretically possible for beings who only live for a finite
time. We cannot enumerate all the natural numbers: they are 0, 1, 2, 3,
and so on. At some point we must content ourselves with “and so on.” We
cannot enumerate all fractions or all irrational numbers, or all of any
other infinite collection. Thus our knowledge in regard to all such
collections can only be derived from a definition by intension.
These remarks are relevant, when we are seeking the definition of
number, in three different ways. In the first place, numbers themselves
form an infinite collection, and cannot therefore be defined by
enumeration. In the second place, the collections having a given number
of terms themselves presumably form an infinite collection: it is to be
presumed, for example, that there are an infinite collection of trios in the
world, for if this were not the case the total number of things in the world
 DE F I N ITION OF N U M B E R 113

would be finite, which, though possible, seems unlikely. In the third

place, we wish to define “number” in such a way that infinite numbers
may be possible; thus we must be able to speak of the number of terms in
an infinite collection, and such a collection must be defined by intension,
i.e., by a property common to all its members and peculiar to them.
For many purposes, a class and a defining characteristic of it are prac-
tically interchangeable. The vital difference between the two consists in
the fact that there is only one class having a given set of members, whereas
there are always many different characteristics by which a given class
may be defined. Men may be defined as featherless bipeds, or as rational
animals, or (more correctly) by the traits by which Swift delineates the
Yahoos. It is this fact that a defining characteristic is never unique which
makes classes useful; otherwise we could be content with the properties
common and peculiar to their members. Any one of these properties can
be used in place of the class whenever uniqueness is not important.
Returning now to the definition of number, it is clear that number is a
way of bringing together certain collections, namely, those that have a
given number of terms. We can suppose all couples in one bundle, all
trios in another, and so on. In this way we obtain various bundles of
collections, each bundle consisting of all the collections that have a certain
number of terms. Each bundle is a class whose members are collections,
i.e., classes; thus each is a class of classes. The bundle consisting of all
couples, for example, is a class of classes: each couple is a class with two
members, and the whole bundle of couples is a class with an infinite
number of members, each of which is a class of two members.
How shall we decide whether two collections are to belong to the
same bundle? The answer that suggests itself is: “Find out how many
members each has, and put them in the same bundle if they have the
same number of members.” But this presupposes that we have defined
numbers, and that we know how to discover how many terms a collection
has. We are so used to the operation of counting that such a presupposition
might easily pass unnoticed. In fact, however, counting, though familiar,
is logically a very complex operation; moreover it is only available, as a
means of discovering how many terms a collection has, when the collection
is finite. Our definition of number must not assume in advance that all
numbers are finite; and we cannot in any case, without a vicious circle,
use counting to define numbers, because numbers are used in counting.
We need, therefore, some other method of deciding when two collections
have the same number of terms.
In actual fact, it is simpler logically to find out whether two collections
114 Bertrand Russell

have the same number of terms than it is to define what that number is.
An illustration will make this clear. If there were no polygamy or
polyandry anywhere in the world, it is clear that the number of husbands
living at any moment would be exactly the same as the number of wives.
We do not need a census to assure us of this, nor do we need to know
what is the actual number of husbands and of wives. We know the number
must be the same in both collections, because each husband has one
wife and each wife has one husband. The relation of husband and wife
is what is called “one-one.”
A relation is said to be “one-one” when, if x has the relation in question
to y, no other term x′ has the same relation to y, and x does not have the
same relation to any term y′ other than y. When only the first of these
two conditions is fulfilled, the relation is called “one-many”; when only
the second is fulfilled, it is called “many-one.” It should be observed
that the number 1 is not used in these definitions.
In Christian countries, the relation of husband to wife is one-one; in
Mohammedan countries it is one-many; in Tibet it is many-one. The
relation of father to son is one-many; that of son to father is many-one,
but that of eldest son to father is one-one. If n is any number, the relation
of n to n + 1 is one-one; so is the relation of n to 2n or to 3n. When we are
considering only positive numbers, the relation of n to n2 is one-one; but
when negative numbers are admitted, it becomes two-one, since n
and –n have the same square. These instances should suffice to make
clear the notions of one-one, one-many, and many-one relations, which
play a great part in the principles of mathematics, not only in relation to
the definition of numbers, but in many other connections.
Two classes are said to be “similar” when there is a one-one relation
which correlates the terms of the one class each with one term of the
other class, in the same manner in which the relation of marriage
correlates husbands with wives. A few preliminary definitions will help
us to state this definition more precisely. The class of those terms that
have a given relation to something or other is called the domain of that
relation: thus fathers are the domain of the relation of father to child,
husbands are the domain of the relation of husband to wife, wives are
the domain of the relation of wife to husband, and husbands and wives
together are the domain of the relation of marriage. The relation of wife to
husband is called the converse of the relation of husband to wife. Similarly
less is the converse of greater, later is the converse of earlier, and so on.
Generally, the converse of a given relation is that relation which holds
between y and x whenever the given relation holds between x and y. The
 DE F I N ITION OF N U M B E R 115

converse domain of a relation is the domain of its converse: thus the class
of wives is the converse domain of the relation of husband to wife. We
may now state our definition of similarity as follows:
One class is said to be “similar” to another when there is a one-one
relation of which the one class is the domain, while the other is the converse
domain.
It is easy to prove (1) that every class is similar to itself, (2) that if a
class α is similar to a class β, then β is similar to α, (3) that if α is similar
to β and β to γ, then α is similar to γ. A relation is said to be reflexive
when it possesses the first of these properties, symmetrical when it possesses
the second, and transitive when it possesses the third. It is obvious that a
relation which is symmetrical and transitive must be reflexive throughout
its domain. Relations which possess these properties are an important
kind, and it is worth while to note that similarity is one of this kind of
relations.
It is obvious to common sense that two finite classes have the same
number of terms if they are similar, but not otherwise. The act of counting
consists in establishing a one-one correlation between the set of objects
counted and the natural numbers (excluding 0) that are used up in the
process. Accordingly common sense concludes that there are as many
objects in the set to be counted as there are numbers up to the last number
used in the counting. And we also know that, so long as we confine
ourselves to finite numbers, there are just n numbers from 1 up to n.
Hence it follows that the last number used in counting a collection is
the number of terms in the collection, provided the collection is finite.
But this result, besides being only applicable to finite collections, depends
upon and assumes the fact that two classes which are similar have the
same number of terms; for what we do when we count (say) 10 objects is
to show that the set of these objects is similar to the set of numbers 1 to
10. The notion of similarity is logically presupposed in the operation of
counting, and is logically simpler though less familiar. In counting, it is
necessary to take the objects counted in a certain order, as first, second,
third, etc., but order is not of the essence of number: it is an irrelevant
addition, an unnecessary complication from the logical point of view.
The notion of similarity does not demand an order: for example, we saw
that the number of husbands is the same as the number of wives, without
having to establish an order of precedence among them. The notion of
similarity also does not require that the classes which are similar should
be finite. Take, for example, the natural numbers (excluding 0) on the
one hand, and the fractions which have 1 for their numerator on the
116 Bertrand Russell

other hand: it is obvious that we can correlate 2 with ½, 3 with 1/3, and
so on, thus proving that the two classes are similar.
We may thus use the notion of “similarity” to decide when two
collections are to belong to the same bundle, in the sense in which we
were asking this question earlier in this chapter. We want to make one
bundle containing the class that has no members: this will be for the
number 0. Then we want a bundle of all the classes that have one
member: this will be for the number 1. Then, for the number 2, we want
a bundle consisting of all couples; then one of all trios; and so on.
Given any collection, we can define the bundle it is to belong to as
being the class of all those collections that are “similar” to it. It is very
easy to see that if (for example) a collection has three members, the class
of all those collections that are similar to it will be the class of trios. And
whatever number of terms a collection may have, those collections that
are “similar” to it will have the same number of terms. We may take this
as a definition of “having the same number of terms.” It is obvious that it
gives results conformable to usage so long as we confine ourselves to
finite collections.
So far we have not suggested anything in the slightest degree
paradoxical. But when we come to the actual definition of numbers we
cannot avoid what must at first sight seem a paradox, though this
impression will soon wear off. We naturally think that the class of couples
(for example) is something different from the number 2. But there is no
doubt about the class of couples: it is indubitable and not difficult to
define, whereas the number 2, in any other sense, is a metaphysical
entity about which we can never feel sure that it exists or that we have
tracked it down. It is therefore more prudent to content ourselves with
the class of couples, which we are sure of, than to hunt for a problematical
number 2 which must always remain elusive. Accordingly we set up the
following definition:
The number of a class is the class of all those classes that are similar to it.
Thus the number of a couple will be the class of all couples. In fact,
the class of all couples will be the number 2, according to our definition.
At the expense of a little oddity, this definition secures definiteness and
indubitableness; and it is not difficult to prove that numbers so defined
have all the properties that we expect numbers to have.
We may now go on to define numbers in general as any one of the
bundles into which similarity collects classes. A number will be a set of
classes such as that any two are similar to each other, and none outside
the set are similar to any inside the set. In other words, a number (in
 DE F I N ITION OF N U M B E R 117

general) is any collection which is the number of one of its members; or,
more simply still:
A number is anything which is the number of some class.
Such a definition has a verbal appearance of being circular, but in fact
it is not. We define “the number of a given class” without using the
notion of number in general; therefore we may define number in general
in terms of “the number of a given class” without committing any logical
error.
Definitions of this sort are in fact very common. The class of fathers,
for example, would have to be defined by first defining what it is to be
the father of somebody; then the class of fathers will be all those who are
somebody’s father. Similarly if we want to define square numbers (say),
we must first define what we mean by saying that one number is the
square of another, and then define square numbers as those that are the
squares of other numbers. This kind of procedure is very common, and
it is important to realize that it is legitimate and even often necessary.

The foregoing consists of Chapter II

from Russell’s INTRODUCTION TO MATH EMATICAL PH ILOSOPHY.
 Edward Kasner
1878–1955

James R. Newman
1907–1966

E dward Kasner, born in New York City in 1878, was educated at

the College of the City of New York, and at Columbia and Göttingen
Universities. He was on the teaching staff at Columbia from 1900
until his retirement in 1949. In addition, he lectured at the New
School for Social Research from 1938 until 1951. He died in 1955.
Kasner’s specialty was higher geometry. On this subject he
wrote Geometry upon a Quadric Surface, The Problems of Geometry, and
Differential Geometric Aspects of Dynamics. He also wrote Einstein’s
Theory of Gravitation. (He was called “one of the twelve men who
understood Einstein.”)
Interested in the simplification of mathematical terminology,
Kasner introduced such phrases and words as snowflake curve,
anti-snowflake curve, googol, and googolplex.
Kasner was widely known for his skill as a teacher. His humor,
fertile imagination, and exceptional ability as a lecturer made his
courses among the most popular at Columbia. But his audience
extended beyond college students; he also liked to give lectures on
infinity, topology, and other difficult matters to children of
kindergarten age. It was his theory that the way to interest children
in mathematics was to begin at the top, and only gradually work
down to the elementary concepts.
All of his students remembered their instruction under Professor
Kasner as an intellectual delight. James Newman, who attended
several of Kasner’s courses as a graduate student, attributed his
own interest in mathematics to this teacher.
James R. Newman was born in 1907 in New York City. He
attended Columbia University, graduating from the School of Law.
118
 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman 119

He served with several government agencies and helped write the

key bill that placed atomic development under civilian control. A
writer as well as a lawyer, Newman was an editor of Scientific American
and New Republic.
Newman’s interest in mathematics began when he discovered that
there was much in the study of philosophy that could not be
understood without some mathematical knowledge. He did not
regard himself as an original, creative mathematician. His
contribution to mathematics has been to serve as guide and
interpreter in a too-little traveled land.
In 1956 Newman published a four-volume anthology, The World of
Mathematics. This work is a collection of writings about mathematics
and mathematicians appealing to a wide range of tastes and capacities.
It became a best seller.
With his teacher Edward Kasner, Newman collaborated on
Mathematics and the Imagination, from which the following selections
are taken.

N ew Names for Old discusses new words that have been added to
mathematical language. New ideas and new ways of looking at old
ideas need new forms of expression. Most of these terms are familiar
but are given special meaning in mathematical usage. In discussing
these special meanings, the authors give a short tour of modern
mathematics.
Two words for large numbers, googol and googolplex, prepare
the reader for a glimpse into the mathematical land that lies beyond
intuition and beyond imagination. This is the realm of the infinite.
The difference between an immensely large number and infinity is
not a quantitative difference, it is qualitative. At infinity, you are
not just farther out—you are in a different country. And this country
shares no border with your ordinary concept of mathematics.
The second piece, Beyond the Googol, makes the leap that carries
you beyond all sense experience. It begins by clarifying the idea of
counting. This requires a precise definition of number. 1 The
everyday understanding of number is not sufficient for the task
ahead. You are going to count that which would seem to be
uncountable—the infinitely large.
1
For additional writings on the concept of number, see Russell, pp. 84–117, and Dantzig,
pp. 165–189, Vol. 9, in this set.
120 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

The problems of the infinite have always been challenging. They

have given rise to such paradoxical notions as “motion is impossible”
and “Achilles will never be able to overtake the tortoise.” Aristotle
and others failed to dispose of these paradoxes. Has modern
mathematics succeeded? The answer is startling. It carries you far
beyond your power to imagine. You will need an adventurous spirit.
Ignore your “common sense” but hold fast to logic.
 New Names for Old

For out of olde feldes, as men seith,

Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere;
And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere.
—Chaucer

very once in a while there is house cleaning in mathematics.

Some old names are discarded, some dusted off and refurbished; new
theories, new additions to the household are assigned a place and name.
So what our title really means is new words in mathematics; not new
names, but new words, new terms which have in part come to represent
new concepts and a reappraisal of old ones in more or less recent
mathematics. There are surely plenty of words already in mathematics
as well as in other subjects. Indeed, there are so many words that it is
even easier than it used to be to speak a great deal and say nothing. It is
mostly through words strung together like beads in a necklace that half
the population of the world has been induced to believe mad things and
to sanctify mad deeds. Frank Vizetelly, the great lexicographer, estimated
that there are 800,000 words in use in the English language. But
mathematicians, generally quite modest, are not satisfied with these
800,000; let us give them a few more.
We can get along without new names until, as we advance in science,
we acquire new ideas and new forms. A peculiar thing about mathematics
is that it does not use so many long and hard names as the other sciences.
Besides, it is more conservative than the other sciences in that it clings
tenaciously to old words. The terms used by Euclid in his Elements are
current in geometry today. But an Ionian physicist would find the
terminology of modern physics, to put it colloquially, pure Greek. In
chemistry, substances no more complicated than sugar, starch, or alcohol
have names like these: Methylpropenylenedihydroxycinnamenylacrylic

121
122 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

acid, or, 0-anhydrosulfaminobenzoine, or, protocatechuicaldehydemeth-

ylene. It would be inconvenient if we had to use such terms in everyday
conversation. Who could imagine even the aristocrat of science at the
breakfast table asking, “Please pass the O-anhydrosulfaminobenzoic acid,”
when all he wanted was sugar for his coffee? Biology also has some
tantalizing tongue twisters. The purpose of these long words is not to
frighten the exoteric, but to describe with scientific curtness what the
literary man would take half a page to express.
In mathematics there are many easy words like “group,” “family,”
“ring,” “simple curve,” “limit,” etc. But these ordinary words are
sometimes given a very peculiar and technical meaning. In fact, here is
a booby-prize definition of mathematics: Mathematics is the science which
uses easy words for hard ideas. In this it differs from any other science.
There are 500,000 known species of insects and every one has a long
Latin name. In mathematics we are more modest. We talk about “fields,”
“groups,” “families,” “spaces,” although much more meaning is attached
to these words than ordinary conversation implies. As its use becomes
more and more technical, nobody can guess the mathematical meaning
of a word any more than one could guess that a “drug store” is a place
where they sell ice-cream sodas and umbrellas. No one could guess the
meaning of the word “group” as it is used in mathematics. Yet it is so
important that whole courses are given on the theory of “groups,” and
hundreds of books are written about it.
Because mathematicians get along with common words, many amusing
ambiguities arise. For instance, the word “function” probably expresses
the most important idea in the whole history of mathematics. Yet, most
people hearing it would think of a “function” as meaning an evening
social affair, while others, less socially minded, would think of their
livers. The word “function” has at least a dozen meanings, but few people
suspect the mathematical one. The mathematical meaning (which we
shall elaborate upon later) is expressed most simply by a table. Such a
table gives the relation between two variable quantities when the value of
one variable quantity is determined by the value of the other. Thus, one
variable quantity may express the years from 1800 to 1938, and the other,
the number of men in the United States wearing handle-bar mustaches; or
one variable may express in decibels the amount of noise made by a political
speaker, and the other, the blood pressure units of his listeners. You
could probably never guess the meaning of the word “ring” as it has
been used in mathematics. It was introduced into the newer algebra within
the last twenty years. The theory of rings is much more recent than
 N EW NAM E S FOR OLD 123

the theory of groups. It is now found in most of the new books on

algebra, and has nothing to do with either matrimony or bells.
Other ordinary words used in mathematics in a peculiar sense are
“domain,” “integration,” “differentiation.” The uninitiated would not
be able to guess what they represent; only mathematicians would know
about them. The word “transcendental” in mathematics has not the
meaning it has in philosophy. A mathematician would say: The number
␲, equal to 3.14159 . . . , is transcendental, because it is not the root of
any algebraic equation with integer coefficients.
Transcendental is a very exalted name for a small number, but it was
coined when it was thought that transcendental numbers were as rare as
quintuplets. The work of Georg Cantor in the realm of the infinite has
since proved that of all the numbers in mathematics, the transcendental
ones are the most common, or, to use the word in a slightly different
sense, the least transcendental. We shall talk of this later when we speak
of another famous transcendental number, e, the base of the natural
logarithms. Immanuel Kant’s “transcendental epistemology” is what most
educated people might think of when the word transcendental is used,
but in that sense it has nothing to do with mathematics. Again, take the
word “evolution,” used in mathematics to denote the process most of us
learned in elementary school, and promptly forgot, of extracting square
roots, cube roots, etc. Spencer, in his philosophy, defines evolution as
“an integration of matter, and a dissipation of motion from an indefinite,
incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity,” etc. But
that, fortunately, has nothing to do with mathematical evolution either.
Even in Tennessee, one may extract square roots without running afoul
of the law.
As we see, mathematics uses simple words for complicated ideas. An
example of a simple word used in a complicated way is the word “simple.”
“Simple curve” and “simple group” represent important ideas in higher
mathematics.

The above is not a simple curve. A simple curve is a closed curve which
does not cross itself and may look like the figure on page 124. There are
many important theorems about such figures that make the word worth
while. Later, we are going to talk about a queer kind of mathematics
124 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

called “rubber-sheet geometry,” and will have much more to say about
simple curves and nonsimple ones. A French mathematician, Jordan,
gave the fundamental theorem: every simple curve has one inside and
one outside. That is, every simple curve divides the plane into two
regions, one inside the curve, and one outside.

There are some groups in mathematics that are “simple” groups. The
definition of “simple group” is really so hard that it cannot be given
here. If we wanted to get a clear idea of what a simple group was, we
should probably have to spend a long time looking into a great many
books, and then, without an extensive mathematical background, we
should probably miss the point. First of all, we should have to define
the concept “group.” Then we should have to give a definition of
subgroups, and then of self-conjugate subgroups, and then we should
be able to tell what a simple group is. A simple group is simply a group
without any self-conjugate subgroups—simple, is it not?
Mathematics is often erroneously referred to as the science of common
sense. Actually, it may transcend common sense and go beyond either
imagination or intuition. It has become a very strange and perhaps
frightening subject from the ordinary point of view, but anyone who
penetrates into it will find a veritable fairyland, a fairyland which is
strange, but makes sense, if not common sense. From the ordinary point
of view mathematics deals with strange things. We shall show you that
occasionally it does deal with strange things, but mostly it deals with
familiar things in a strange way. If you look at yourself in an ordinary
mirror, regardless of your physical attributes, you may find yourself
amusing, but not strange; a subway ride to Coney Island, and a glance
at yourself in one of the distorting mirrors will convince you that from
another point of view you may be strange as well as amusing. It is largely
a matter of what you are accustomed to. A Russian peasant came to
Moscow for the first time and went to see the sights. He went to the zoo
and saw the giraffes. You may find a moral in his reaction as plainly as
in the fables of La Fontaine. “Look,” he said, “at what the Bolsheviks have
 N EW NAM E S FOR OLD 125

done to our horses.” That is what modern mathematics has done to simple
geometry and to simple arithmetic.
There are other words and expressions, not so familiar, which have
been invented even more recently. Take, for instance, the word “turbine.”
Of course, that is already used in engineering, but it is an entirely new
word in geometry. The mathematical name applies to a certain diagram.
(Geometry, whatever others may think, is the study of different shapes,

many of them very beautiful, having harmony, grace and symmetry. Of

course, there are also fat books written on abstract geometry, and abstract
space in which neither a diagram nor a shape appears. This is a very
important branch of mathematics, but it is not the geometry studied by
the Egyptians and the Greeks. Most of us, if we can play chess at all, are
content to play it on a board with wooden chess pieces; but there are
some who play the game blindfolded and without touching the board. It
might be a fair analogy to say that abstract geometry is like blindfold
chess—it is a game played without concrete objects.) Above you see a
picture of a turbine, in fact, two of them.
A turbine consists of an infinite number of “elements” filled in
continuously. An element is not merely a point; it is a point with an
associated direction—like an iron filing. A turbine is composed of an
infinite number of these elements, arranged in a peculiar way: the points
must be arranged on a perfect circle, and the inclination of the iron
filings must be at the same angle to the circle throughout. There are
thus an infinite number of elements of equal inclination to the various
tangents of the circle. In the special case where the angle between the
direction of the element and the direction of the tangent is zero, what
would happen? The turbine would be a circle. In other words, the theory
of turbines is a generalization of the theory of the circle. If the angle is
ninety degrees, the elements point toward the center of the circle. In
that special case we have a normal turbine (see left-hand diagram).
126 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

There is a geometry of turbines, instead of a geometry of circles. It is

a rather technical branch of mathematics which concerns itself with
working out continuous groups of transformations connected with
differential equations and differential geometry. The geometry connected
with the turbine bears the rather odd name of “turns and slides.”

The circle is one of the oldest figures in mathematics. The straight

line is the simplest line, but the circle is the simplest nonstraight curve.
It is often regarded as the limit of a polygon with an infinite number of
sides. You can see for yourself that as a series of polygons is inscribed in
a circle with each polygon having more sides than its predecessor, each
polygon gets to look more and more like a circle.
The Greeks were already familiar with the idea that as a regular polygon
increases in the number of its sides, it differs less and less from the circle
in which it is inscribed. Indeed, it may well be that in the eyes of an

The circle as the limit of inscribed polygons

omniscient creature, the circle would look like a polygon with an infinite
number of straight sides. However, in the absence of complete
omniscience, we shall continue to regard a circle as being a nonstraight
curve. There are some interesting generalizations of the circle when it is
viewed in this way. There is, for example, the concept denoted by the
word “cycle,” which was introduced by a French mathematician,
Laguerre. A cycle is a circle with an arrow on it, like this:

If you took the same circle and put an arrow on it in the opposite
direction, it would become a different cycle.
 N EW NAM E S FOR OLD 127

The Greeks were specialists in the art of posing problems which neither
they nor succeeding generations of mathematicians have ever been able
to solve. The three most famous of these problems—the squaring of the
circle, the duplication of the cube, and the trisection of an angle—we
shall discuss later. Many well-meaning, self-appointed, and self-anointed
mathematicians, and a motley assortment of lunatics and cranks, knowing
neither history nor mathematics, supply an abundant crop of “solutions”

The eight solutions of the problem of Apollonius.

Each lightly drawn circle is in contact with three heavily drawn ones.

of these insoluble problems each year. However, some of the classical

problems of antiquity have been solved. For example, the theory of cycles
was used by Laguerre in solving the problem of Apollonius: given three
fixed circles, to find a circle that touches them all. It turns out to be a
matter of elementary high school geometry, although it involves
ingenuity, and any brilliant high school student could work it out. It
has eight answers, as shown in the diagram above.
They can all be constructed with ruler and compass, and many methods
of solution have been found. Given three circles, there will be eight circles
touching all of them. Given three cycles, however, there will be only one
clockwise cycle that touches them all. (Two cycles are said to touch each
other only if their arrows agree in direction at the point of contact.) Thus,
by using the idea of cycles, we have one definite answer instead of eight.
Laguerre made the idea of cycles the basis of an elegant theory.
Another variation of the circle introduced by the eminent American
128 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

mathematician C. J. Keyser is obtained by taking a circle and removing

one point.1 This creates a serious change in conception. Keyser calls it
“a pathocircle” (from pathological circle). He has used it in discussing
the logic of axioms.

The eight solutions of Appolonius

merged into one diagram
We have made yet another change in the concept of circle, which
introduces another word and a new diagram. Take a circle and instead
of leaving one point out, simply emphasize one point as the initial point.
This is to be called a “clock.” It has been used in the theory of polygenic
functions. “Polygenic” is a word recently introduced into the theory of
complex functions—about 1927. There was an important word,
“monogenic,” introduced in the nineteenth century by the famous French
mathematician Augustin Cauchy, and used in the classical theory of
functions. It is used to denote functions that have a single derivative at
a point, as in the differential calculus. But most functions, in the complex
domain, have an infinite number of derivatives at a point. If a function
is not monogenic, it can never be bigenic, or trigenic. Either the
derivative has one value or an infinite number of values—either monogenic
or polygenic, nothing intermediate. Monogenic means one rate of growth.
Polygenic means many rates of growth. The complete derivative of a
polygenic function is represented by a congruence (a double infinity) of
clocks, all with different starting points, but with the same uniform rate of

1. This is a diagram which the reader will have to imagine, for it is beyond the capacity
of any printer to make a circle with one point omitted. A point, having no dimensions,
will, like many of the persons on the Lord High Executioner’s list, never be missed.
So the circle with one point missing is purely conceptual, not an idea which can be
pictured.
 N EW NAM E S FOR OLD 129

rotation. It would be useless to attempt to give a simplified explanation

of these concepts. (The neophyte will have to bear with us over a few
intervals like this for the sake of the more experienced mathematical reader.)
The going has been rather hard in the last
paragraph, and if a few of the polygenic seas have
swept you overboard, we shall throw you a
hexagonal life preserver. We may consider a very
simple word that has been introduced in
elementary geometry to indicate a certain kind
The parhexagon
of hexagon. The word on which to fix your at-
tention is “parhexagon.” An ordinary hexagon has six arbitrary sides. A
parhexagon is that kind of hexagon in which any side is both equal and
parallel to the side opposite to it (as in the figure above).
If the opposite sides of a quadrilateral are equal and parallel, it is
called a parallelogram. By the same reasoning that we use for the word
parhexagon, a parallelogram might have been called a parquadrilateral.
Here is an example of a theorem about the parhexagon: take any
irregular hexagon, not necessarily a parhexagon, ABCDEF. Draw the
diagonals AC, BD, CE, DF, EA, and FB, forming the six triangles,
ABC, BCD, CDE, DEF, EFA, and FAB. Find the six centers of gravity,
A′, B′, C′, D′, E′, and F′ of these triangles. (The center of gravity of a

ABCDEF is an irregular hexagon.

A′B′C′D′E′F′ is a parhexagon.

triangle is the point at which the triangle would balance if it were cut
out of cardboard and supported only at that point; it coincides with the
point of intersection of the medians.) Draw A′B′, B′C′, C′D′, D′E′,
E′F′, and F′A′. Then the new inner hexagon A′B′C′D′E′F′ will always
be a parhexagon.
130 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

The word radical, favorite call to arms among Republicans,

Democrats, Communists, Socialists, Nazis, Fascists, Trotskyites, etc.,
has a less hortatory and bellicose character in mathematics. For one
thing, everybody knows its meaning: i.e., square root, cube root,
fourth root, fifth root, etc. Combining a word previously defined
with this one, we might say that the extraction of a root is the
evolution of a radical. The square root of 9 is 3; the square root of 10
is greater than 3, and the most famous and the simplest of all square
roots, the first incommensurable number discovered by the Greeks,
the square root of 2, is 1.414. . . . There are also composite radicals—
expressions like The symbol for a radical is not the
hammer and sickle, but a sign three or four centuries old, and the
idea of the mathematical radical is even older than that. The concept
of the “hyperradical,” or “ultraradical,” which means something
higher than a radical, but lower than a transcendental, is of recent
origin. It has a symbol which we shall see in a moment. First, we
must say a few words about radicals in general. There are certain
numbers and functions in mathematics which are not expressible in
the language of radicals and which are generally not well
understood. Many ideas for which there are no concrete or
diagrammatic representations are difficult to explain. Most people
find it impossible to think without words; it is necessary to give them
a word and a symbol to pin their attention. Hyperradical or ultra-
radical, for which hitherto there have been neither words, nor
symbols, fall into this category.
We first meet these ultraradicals, not in Mexico City, but in trying to
solve equations of the fifth degree. The Egyptians solved equations of
the first degree perhaps 4,000 years ago. That is, they found that the
solution of the equation ax + b = 0, which is represented in geometry by a
straight line, is . The quadratic equation ax2 + bx + c = 0 was solved

by the Hindus and the Arabs with the formula .

The various conic sections, the circle, the ellipse, the parabola, and the
hyperbola, are the geometric pictures of quadratic equations in two
variables.
Then in the sixteenth century the Italians solved the equations of
third and fourth degree, obtaining long formulas involving cube roots
and square roots. So that by the year 1550, a few years before Shakespeare
was born, the equation of the first, second, third, and fourth degrees had
been solved. Then there was a delay of 250 years, because mathematicians
 N EW NAM E S FOR OLD 131

were struggling with the equation of the fifth degree—the general quintic.
Finally, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Ruffini and Abel
showed that equations of the fifth degree could not be solved with
radicals. The general quintic is thus not like the general quadratic, cubic
or biquadratic. Nevertheless, it presents a
problem in algebra which theoretically can
be solved by algebraic operations. Only,
A portrait
these operations are so hard that they of two ultraradicals
cannot be expressed by the symbols for radi-
cals. These new higher things are named “ultraradicals,” and they too
have their special symbols.
With such symbols combined with radicals, we can solve equations
of the fifth degree. For example, the solution of x5 + x = a may be written
The usefulness of the special symbol and name is
apparent. Without them the solution of the quintic equation could not
be compactly expressed.

We may now give a few ideas somewhat easier than those with which
we have thus far occupied ourselves. These ideas were presented some
time ago to a number of children in kindergarten. It was amazing how
well they understood everything that was said to them. Indeed, it is a
fair inference that kindergarten children can enjoy lectures on graduate
mathematics as long as the mathematical concepts are clearly presented.
It was raining and the children were asked how many raindrops would
fall on New York. The highest answer was 100. They had never counted
higher than 100 and what they meant to imply when they used that
number was merely something very, very big—as big as they could
imagine. They were asked how many raindrops hit the roof, and how
many hit New York, and how many single raindrops hit all of New York
in 24 hours. They soon got a notion of the bigness of these numbers
even though they did not know the symbols for them. They were certain
in a little while that the number of raindrops was a great deal bigger
than a hundred. They were asked to think of the number of grains of
sand on the beach at Coney Island and decided that the number of
grains of sand and the number of raindrops were about the same. But
the important thing is that they realized that the number was finite, not
infinite. In this respect they showed their distinct superiority over many
scientists who to this day use the word infinite when they mean some
big number, like a billion billion.
132 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

Counting, something such scientists evidently do not realize, is a

precise operation.2 It may be wonderful but there is nothing vague or
mysterious about it. If you count something, the answer you get is either
perfect or all wrong; there is no half way. It is very much like catching a
train. You either catch it or you miss it, and if you miss it by a split
second you might as well have come a week late. There is a famous
quotation which illustrates this:
Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!
A big number is big, but it is definite and it is finite. Of course in
poetry, the finite ends with about three thousand; any greater number is
infinite. In many poems, the poet will talk to you about the infinite
number of stars. But, if ever there was a hyperbole, this is it, for nobody,
not even the poet, has ever seen more than three thousand stars on a
clear night, without the aid of a telescope.
With the Hottentots, infinity begins at three.3 Ask a Hottentot how
many cows he owns, and if he has more than three he’ll say “many.” The
number of raindrops falling on New York is also “many.” It is a large
finite number, but nowhere near infinity.
Now here is the name of a very large number: “Googol.” 4 Most people
would say, “A googol is so large that you cannot name it or talk about it;
it is so large that it is infinite.” Therefore, we shall talk about it, explain
exactly what it is, and show that it belongs to the very same family as the
number 1.
A googol is this number which one of the children in the kindergarten
wrote on the blackboard: 10000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.
The definition of a googol is: 1 followed by a hundred zeros. It was
decided, after careful mathematical researches in the kindergarten, that
the number of raindrops falling on New York in 24 hours, or even in a
year or in a century, is much less than a googol. Indeed, the googol is a
number just larger than the largest numbers that are used in physics or
astronomy. All those numbers require less than a hundred zeros. This

2. No one would say that 1 + 1 is “about equal to 2.” It is just as silly to say that a billion
billion is not a finite number, simply because it is big. Any number which can be
named, or conceived of in terms of the integers is finite. Infinite means something quite
different, as we shall see in the chapter on the googol.
3. Although, in all fairness, it must be pointed out that some of the tribes of the Belgian
Congo can count to a million and beyond.
4. Not even approximately a Russian author.
 N EW NAM E S FOR OLD 133

information is, of course, available to everyone, but seems to be a great

secret in many scientific quarters.
A very distinguished scientific publication recently came forth with
the revelation that the number of snow crystals necessary to form the ice
age was a billion to the billionth power. This is very startling and also
very silly. A billion to the billionth power looks like this:
10000000001000000000. A more reasonable estimate and a somewhat smaller
number would be 1030. As a matter of fact, it has been estimated that if
the entire universe, which you will concede is a trifle larger than the
earth, were filled with protons and electrons, so that no vacant space
remained, the total number of protons and electrons would be 10110 (i.e.,
1 with 110 zeros after it). Unfortunately, as soon as people talk about
large numbers, they run amuck. They seem to be under the impression
that since zero equals nothing, they can add as many zeros to a number
as they please with practically no serious consequences. We shall have
to be a little more careful than that in talking about big numbers.
To return to Coney Island, the number of grains of sand on the beach
is about 1020, or more descriptively, 100000000000000000000. That is a
large number, but not as large as the number mentioned by the divorcee
in a recent divorce suit who had telephoned that she loved the man “a
million billion billion times and eight times around the world.” It was
the largest number that she could conceive of, and shows the kind of
thing that may be hatched in a love nest.
Though people do a great deal of talking, the total output since the
beginning of gabble to the present day, including all baby talk, love
songs, and Congressional debates, totals about 1016. This is ten million
billion. Contrary to popular belief, this is a larger number of words than
is spoken at the average afternoon bridge.
A great deal of the veneration for the authority of the printed word
would vanish if one were to calculate the number of words which have
been printed since the Gutenberg Bible appeared. It is a number somewhat
larger than 1016. A recent popular historical novel alone accounts for the
printing of several hundred billion words.
The largest number seen in finance (though new records are in the
making) represents the amount of money in circulation in Germany at
the peak of the inflation. It was less than a googol—merely 496, 585,
346, 000, 000, 000, 000. A distinguished economist vouches for the
accuracy of this figure. The number of marks in circulation was very
nearly equal to the number of grains of sand on Coney Island beach.
The number of atoms of oxygen in the average thimble is a good deal
134 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

larger. It would be represented by perhaps 10000000000000000000000

00000. The number of electrons, in size exceedingly smaller than the
atoms, is much more enormous. The number of electrons which pass
through the filament of an ordinary fifty-watt electric lamp in a minute
equals the number of drops of water that flow over Niagara Falls in a
century.
One may also calculate the number of electrons, not only in the average
room, but over the whole earth, and out through the stars, the Milky
Way, and all the nebulae. The reason for giving all these examples of
very large numbers is to emphasize the fact that no matter how large the
collection to be counted, a finite number will do the trick. We will have
occasion later on to speak of infinite collections, but those encountered
in nature, though sometimes very large, are all definitely finite. A
celebrated scientist recently stated in all seriousness that he believed
that the number of pores (through which leaves breathe) of all the leaves,
of all the trees in all the world, would certainly be infinite. Needless to
say, he was not a mathematician. The number of electrons in a single
leaf is much bigger than the number of pores of all the leaves of all the
trees of all the world. And still the number of all the electrons in the
entire universe can be found by means of the physics of Einstein. It is a
good deal less than a googol—perhaps one with seventy-nine zeros, 1079,
as estimated by Eddington.
Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as by scientists.
The name “googol” was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner’s nine-year-old
nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number,
namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it. He was very certain that this
number was not infinite, and therefore equally certain that it had to have
a name. At the same time that he suggested “googol” he gave a name for a
still larger number: “Googolplex.” A googolplex is much larger than a
googol, but is still finite, as the inventor of the name was quick to point
out. It was first suggested that a googolplex should be 1, followed by
writing zeros until you got tired. This is a description of what would
happen if one actually tried to write a googolplex, but different people get
tired at different times and it would never do to have Camera a better
mathematician than Dr. Einstein, simply because he had more endurance.
The googolplex then, is a specific finite number, with so many zeros after
the 1 that the number of zeros is a googol. A googolplex is much bigger
than a googol, much bigger even than a googol times a googol. A googol
times a googol would be 1 with 200 zeros, whereas a googolplex is 1 with
a googol of zeros. You will get some idea of the size of this very large
 N EW NAM E S FOR OLD 135

but finite number from the fact that there would not be enough room to
write it, if you went to the farthest star, touring all the nebulae and
putting down zeros every inch of the way.
One might not believe that such a large number would ever really
have any application; but one who felt that way would not be a
mathematician. A number as large as the googolplex might be of real use
in problems of combination. This would be the type of problem in which
it might come up scientifically:
Consider this book which is made up of carbon and nitrogen and of
other elements. The answer to the question, “How many atoms are there
in this book?” would certainly be a finite number, even less than a googol.
Now imagine that the book is held suspended by a string, the end of
which you are holding. How long will it be necessary to wait before the
book will jump up into your hand? Could it conceivably ever happen?
One answer might be “No, it will never happen without some external
force causing it to do so.” But that is not correct. The right answer is
that it will almost certainly happen sometime in less than a googolplex of
years—perhaps tomorrow.
The explanation of this answer can be found in physical chemistry,
statistical mechanics, the kinetic theory of gases, and the theory of
probability. We cannot dispose of all these subjects in a few lines, but we
will try. Molecules are always moving. Absolute rest of molecules would
mean absolute zero degrees of temperature, and absolute zero degrees of
temperature is not only nonexistent, but impossible to obtain. All the
molecules of the surrounding air bombard the book. At present the
bombardment from above and below is nearly the same and gravity keeps
the book down. It is necessary to wait for the favorable moment when
there happens to be an enormous number of molecules bombarding the
book from below and very few from above. Then gravity will be overcome
and the book will rise. It would be somewhat like the effect known in
physics as the Brownian movement, which describes the behavior of small
particles in a liquid as they dance about under the impact of molecules. It
would be analogous to the Brownian movement on a vast scale.
But the probability that this will happen in the near future or, for that
matter, on any specific occasion that we might mention, is between

and . To be reasonably sure that the book will rise, we should

have to wait between a googol and a googolplex of years.

When working with electrons or with problems of combination like the
136 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

one of the book, we need larger numbers than are usually talked about.
It is for that reason that names like googol and googolplex, though they
may appear to be mere jokes, have a real value. The names help to fix in
our minds the fact that we are still dealing with finite numbers. To
repeat, a googol is 10100; a googolplex is 10 to the googol power, which
may be written .
We have seen that the number of years that one would have to wait to
see the miracle of the rising book would be less than a googolplex. In
that number of years the earth may well have become a frozen planet as
dead as the moon, or perhaps splintered to a number of meteors and
comets. The real miracle is not that the book will rise, but that with the
aid of mathematics, we can project ourselves into the future and predict
with accuracy when it will probably rise, i.e., some time between today
and the year googolplex.

We have mentioned quite a few new names in mathematics—new names

for old and new ideas. There is one more new name which it is proper
to mention in conclusion. Watson Davis, the popular science reporter,
has given us the name “mathescope.” With the aid of the magnificent
new microscopes and telescopes, man, midway between the stars and the
atoms, has come a little closer to both. The mathescope is not a physical
instrument; it is a purely intellectual instrument, the ever-increasing
insight which mathematics gives into the fairyland which lies beyond
intuition and beyond imagination. Mathematicians, unlike philosophers,
say nothing about ultimate truth, but patiently, like the makers of the
great microscopes, and the great telescopes, they grind their lenses. In
this book, we shall let you see through the newer and greater lenses
which the mathematicians have ground. Be prepared for strange sights
through the mathescope!
 Beyond the Googol

If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it;
for it is hard to be sought out, and difficult.
—Heraclitus

athematics may well be a science of austere logical

propositions in precise canonical form, but in its countless applications
it serves as a tool and a language, the language of description, of number
and size. It describes with economy and elegance the elliptic orbits of
the planets as readily as the shape and dimensions of this page or a
cornfield. The whirling dance of the electron can be seen by no one; the
most powerful telescopes can reveal only a meager bit of the distant stars
and nebulae and the cold far corners of space. But with the aid of
mathematics and the imagination the very small, the very large—all things
may be brought within man’s domain.
To count is to talk the language of number. To count to a googol, or
to count to ten is part of the same process; the googol is simply harder to
pronounce. The essential thing to realize is that the googol and ten are
kin, like the giant stars and the electron. Arithmetic—this counting
language—makes the whole world kin, both in space and in time.
To grasp the meaning and importance of mathematics, to appreciate its
beauty and its value, arithmetic must first be understood, for mostly, since
its beginning, mathematics has been arithmetic in simple or elaborate
attire. Arithmetic has been the queen and the handmaiden of the sciences
from the days of the astrologers of Chaldea and the high priests of Egypt
to the present days of relativity, quanta, and the adding machine.
Historians may dispute the meaning of ancient papyri, theologians may
wrangle over the exegesis of Scripture, philosophers may debate over

137
138 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

Pythagorean doctrine, but all will concede that the numbers in the papyri,
in the Scriptures and in the writings of Pythagoras are the same as the
numbers of today. As arithmetic, mathematics has helped man to cast
horoscopes, to make calendars, to predict the risings of the Nile, to
measure fields and the height of the Pyramids, to measure the speed of a
stone as it fell from a tower in Pisa, the speed of an apple as it fell from
a tree in Woolsthorpe, to weigh the stars and the atoms, to mark the
passage of time, to find the curvature of space. And although mathematics
is also the calculus, the theory of probability, the matrix algebra, the
science of the infinite, it is still the art of counting.

Everyone who will read this book can count, and yet, what is
counting? The dictionary definitions are about as helpful as Johnson’s
definition of a net: “A series of reticulated interstices.” Learning to compare
is learning to count. Numbers come much later; they are an artificiality, an
abstraction. Counting, matching, comparing are almost as indigenous
to man as his fingers. Without the faculty of comparing, and without
his fingers, it is unlikely that he would have arrived at numbers.
One who knows nothing of the formal processes of counting is still
able to compare two classes of objects, to determine which is the greater,
which the less. Without knowing anything about numbers, one may
ascertain whether two classes have the same number of elements; for
example, barring prior mishaps, it is easy to show that we have the same
number of fingers on both hands by simply matching finger with finger
on each hand.
To describe the process of matching, which underlies counting,
mathematicians use a picturesque name. They call it putting classes into
a “one-to-one reciprocal correspondence” with each other. Indeed, that
is all there is to the art of counting as practiced by primitive peoples, by
us, or by Einstein. A few examples may serve to make this clear.
In a monogamous country it is unnecessary to count both the husbands
and the wives in order to ascertain the number of married people. If
allowances are made for the few gay Lotharios who do not conform to
either custom or statute, it is sufficient to count either the husbands or
the wives. There are just as many in one class as in the other. The
correspondence between the two classes is one-to-one.
There are more useful illustrations. Many people are gathered in a
large hall where seats are to be provided. The question is, are there enough
chairs to go around? It would be quite a job to count both the people and
the chairs, and in this case unnecessary. In kindergarten children play a
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 139

game called “Going to Jerusalem”; in a room full of children and chairs

there is always one less chair than the number of children. At a signal,
each child runs for a chair. The child left standing is “out.” A chair is
removed and the game continues. Here is the solution to our problem. It
is only necessary to ask everyone in the hall to be seated. If everyone sits
down and no chairs are left vacant, it is evident that there are as many
chairs as people. In other words, without actually knowing the number
of chairs or people, one does know that the number is the same. The two
classes—chairs and people—have been shown to be equal in number by a
one-to-one correspondence. To each person corresponds a chair, to each
chair, a person.
In counting any class of objects, it is this method alone which is
employed. One class contains the things to be counted; the other class is
always at hand. It is the class of integers, or “natural numbers,” which
for convenience we regard as being given in serial order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7. . . . Matching in one-to-one correspondence the elements of the first
class with the integers, we experience a common, but none the less
wonderful phenomenon—the last integer necessary to complete the
pairings denotes how many elements there are.

In clarifying the idea of counting, we made the unwarranted

assumption that the concept of number was understood by everyone.
The number concept may seem intuitively clear, but a precise definition
is required. While the definition may seem worse than the disease, it is
not as difficult as appears at first glance. Read it carefully and you will
find that it is both explicit and economical.
Given a class C containing certain elements, it is possible to find
other classes, such that the elements of each may be matched one to one
with the elements of C. (Each of these classes is thus called “equivalent
to C.”) All such classes, including C, whatever the character of their
elements, share one property in common: all of them have the same
cardinal number, which is called the cardinal number of the class C.1
The cardinal number of the class C is thus seen to be the symbol
representing the set of all classes that can be put into one-to-one
correspondence with C. For example, the number 5 is simply the name, or

1. We distinguish cardinal from ordinal numbers, which denote the relation of an element in
a class to the others, with reference to some system of order. Thus, we speak of the first
Pharaoh of Egypt, or of the fourth integer, in their customary order, or of the third day
of the week, etc. These are examples of ordinals.
140 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

symbol, attached to the set of all the classes, each of which can be put into
one-to-one correspondence with the fingers of one hand.
Hereafter we may refer without ambiguity to the number of elements
in a class as the cardinal number of that class or, briefly, as “its cardinality.”
The question, “How many letters are there in the word mathematics?” is
the same as the question, “What is the cardinality of the class whose
elements are the letters in the word mathematics?” Employing the method
of one-to-one correspondence, the following graphic device answers the
question, and illustrates the method:

It must now be evident that this method is neither strange nor esoteric;
it was not invented by mathematicians to make something natural and
easy seem unnatural and hard. It is the method employed when we
count our change or our chickens; it is the proper method for counting
any class, no matter how large, from ten to a googolplex—and beyond.
Soon we shall speak of the “beyond” when we turn to classes which
are not finite. Indeed, we shall try to measure our measuring class—the
integers. One-to-one correspondence should, therefore, be thoroughly
understood, for an amazing revelation awaits us: Infinite classes can
also be counted, and by the very same means. But before we try to count
them, let us practice on some very big numbers—big, but not infinite.

“Googol” is already in our vocabulary: It is a big number—one, with

a hundred zeros after it. Even bigger is the googolplex: 1 with a googol
zeros after it. Most numbers encountered in the description of nature
are much smaller, though a few are larger.
Enormous numbers occur frequently in modern science. Sir Arthur
Eddington claims that there are, not approximately, but exactly 136 · 2256
protons,2 and an equal number of electrons, in the universe. Though
not easy to visualize, this number, as a symbol on paper, takes up little
room. Not quite as large as the googol, it is completely dwarfed by the
googolplex. None the less, Eddington’s number, the googol, and the
googolplex are finite.
2. Let no one suppose that Sir Arthur has counted them. But he does have a theory to
justify his claim. Anyone with a better theory may challenge Sir Arthur, for who can be
referee? Here is his numb er written out: 15,747,72 4,13 6,275,00 2,577,6 0 5,-
653,961,181,555,468,044,717,914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296—
accurate, he says, to the last digit.
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 141

A veritable giant is Skewes’ number, even bigger than a googolplex.

It gives information about the distribution of primes and looks like this:

Or, for example, the total possible number of moves in a game of chess
is:

And speaking of chess, as the eminent English mathematician

G. H. Hardy pointed out—if we imagine the entire universe as a
chessboard, and the protons in it as chessmen, and if we agree to call
any interchange in the position of two protons a “move” in this cosmic
game, then the total number of possible moves, of all odd coincidences,
would be Skewes’ number:

No doubt most people believe that such numbers are part of the
marvelous advance of science, and that a few generations ago, to say
nothing of centuries back, no one in dream or fancy could have
conceived of them.
There is some truth in that idea. For one thing, the ancient
cumbersome methods of mathematical notation made the writing of big
numbers difficult, if not actually impossible. For another, the average
citizen of today encounters such huge sums, representing armament
expenditures and stellar distances, that he is quite conversant with, and
immune to, big numbers.
But there were clever people in ancient times. Poets in every age may
have sung of the stars as infinite in number, when all they saw was,
perhaps, three thousand. But to Archimedes, a number as large as a
googol, or even larger, was not disconcerting. He says as much in an
introductory passage in The Sand Reckoner, realizing that a number is not
infinite merely because it is enormous.
There are some, King Gelon, who think that the number of the sand
is infinite in multitude; and I mean by the sand, not only that which
exists about Syracuse and the rest of Sicily, but also that which is found
in every region whether inhabited or uninhabited. Again there are some
who, without regarding it as infinite, yet think that no number has been
named which is great enough to exceed its multitude. And it is clear that
they who hold this view, if they imagined a mass made up of sand in
other respects as large as the mass of the earth, including in it all the
142 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

seas and the hollows of the earth filled up to a height equal to that of
the highest of the mountains, would be many times further still from
recognizing that any number could be expressed which exceeded the
multitude of the sand so taken. But I will try to show you by means of
geometrical proofs, which you will be able to follow, that, of the numbers
named by me and given in the work which I sent to Zeuxippus, some
exceed not only the number of the mass of sand equal in magnitude to
the earth filled up in the way described, but also that of a mass equal in
magnitude to the universe.

The Greeks had very definite ideas about the infinite. Just as we are
indebted to them for much of our wit and our learning, so are we indebted
to them for much of our sophistication about the infinite. Indeed, had
we always retained their clear-sightedness, many of the problems and
paradoxes connected with the infinite would never have arisen.
Above everything, we must realize that “very big” and “infinite” are
entirely different.3 By using the method of one-to-one correspondence,
the protons and electrons in the universe can theoretically be counted as
easily as the buttons on a vest. Sufficient and more than sufficient for
that task, or for the task of counting any finite collection, are the integers.
But measuring the totality of integers is another problem. To measure such
a class demands a lofty viewpoint. Besides being, as the German
mathematician Kronecker thought, the work of God, which requires
courage to appraise, the class of integers is infinite—which is a great deal
more inconvenient. It is worse than heresy to measure our own endless
measuring rod!

The problems of the infinite have challenged man’s mind and have
fired his imagination as no other single problem in the history of thought.
The infinite appears both strange and familiar, at times beyond our grasp,
at times natural and easy to understand. In conquering it, man broke
the fetters that bound him to earth. All his faculties were required for
this conquest—his reasoning powers, his poetic fancy, his desire to know.
To establish the science of the infinite involves the principle of
mathematical induction. This principle affirms the power of reasoning by
recurrence. It typifies almost all mathematical thinking, all that we do
when we construct complex aggregates out of simple elements. It is, as
3. There is no point where the very big starts to merge into the infinite. You may write a
number as big as you please; it will be no nearer the infinite than the number 1 or the
number 7. Make sure that you keep this distinction very clear and you will have
mastered many of the subtleties of the transfinite.
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 143

Poincaré remarked, “at once necessary to the mathematician and irreducible

to logic.” His statement of the principle is: “If a property be true of the
number one, and if we establish that it is true of n + 1,4 provided it be of
n, it will be true of all the whole numbers.” Mathematical induction is not
derived from experience, rather is it an inherent, intuitive, almost
instinctive property of the mind. “What we have once done we can do again.”
If we can construct numbers to ten, to a million, to a googol, we are
led to believe that there is no stopping, no end. Convinced of this, we
need not go on forever; the mind grasps that which it has never
experienced—the infinite itself. Without any sense of discontinuity,
without transgressing the canons of logic, the mathematician and
philosopher have bridged in one stroke the gulf between the finite and
the infinite. The mathematics of the infinite is a sheer affirmation of the
inherent power of reasoning by recurrence.
In the sense that “infinite” means “without end, without bound,” simply
“not finite,” probably everyone understands its meaning. No difficulty
arises where no precise definition is required. Nevertheless, in spite of the
famous epigram that mathematics is the science in which we do not know
what we are talking about, at least we shall have to agree to talk about the
same thing. Apparently, even those of scientific temper can argue bitterly
to the point of mutual vilification on subjects ranging from Marxism and
dialectical materialism to group theory and the uncertainty principle, only
to find, on the verge of exhaustion and collapse, that they are on the same
side of the fence. Such arguments are generally the results of vague
terminology; to assume that everyone is familiar with the precise
mathematical definition of “infinite” is to build a new Tower of Babel.
Before undertaking a definition, we might do well to glance backwards
to see how mathematicians and philosophers of other times dealt with
the problem.
The infinite has a double aspect—the infinitely large, and the infinitely
small. Repeated arguments and demonstrations, of apparently apodictic
force, were advanced, overwhelmed, and once more resuscitated to prove
or disprove its existence. Few of the arguments were ever refuted—each
was buried under an avalanche of others. The happy result was that the
problem never became any clearer.5

The warfare began in antiquity with the paradoxes of Zeno; it has never
4. Where n is any integer.
5. No one has written more brilliantly or more wittily on this subject than Bertrand
Russell. See particularly his essays in the volume Mysticism and Logic.
144 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

ceased. Fine points were debated with a fervor worthy of the earliest
Christian martyrs, but without a tenth part of the acumen of medieval
theologians. Today, some mathematicians think the infinite has been
reduced to a state of vassalage. Others are still wondering what it is.
Zeno’s puzzles may help to bring the problem into sharper focus. Zeno
of Elea, it will be recalled, said some disquieting things about motion,
with reference to an arrow, Achilles, and a tortoise. This strange company
was employed on behalf of the tenet of Eleatic philosophy—that all motion
is an illusion. It has been suggested, probably by “baffled critics,” that
“Zeno had his tongue in cheek when he made his puzzles.” Regardless
of motive, they are immeasurably subtle, and perhaps still defy solution.6
One paradox—the Dichotomy—states that it is impossible to cover any
given distance. The argument: First, half the distance must be traversed,
then half of the remaining distance, then again half of what remains,
and so on. It follows that some portion of the distance to be covered
always remains, and therefore motion is impossible! A solution of this
paradox reads:

The successive distances to be covered form an infinite geometric

series:

each term of which is half of the one before. Although this series has an
infinite number of terms, its sum is finite and equals 1. Herein, it is said,
lies the flaw of the Dichotomy. Zeno assumed that any totality composed of
an infinite number of parts must, itself, be infinite, whereas we have just
seen an infinite number of elements which make up the finite totality—1.

6. To be sure, a variety of explanations have been given for the paradoxes. In the last
analysis, the explanations for the riddles rest upon the interpretation of the foundations
of mathematics. Mathematicians like Brouwer, who reject the infinite, would probably
not accept any of the solutions given.
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 145

The paradox of the tortoise states that Achilles, running to overtake

the tortoise, must first reach the place where it started:—but the tortoise
has already departed. This comedy, however, is repeated indefinitely.
As Achilles arrives at each new point in the race, the tortoise having
been there, has already left. Achilles is as unlikely to catch him as a
rider on a carrousel the rider ahead.
Finally: the arrow in flight must be moving every instant of time. But
at every instant it must be somewhere in space. However, if the arrow
must always be in some one place, it cannot at every instant also be in
transit, for to be in transit is to be nowhere.
Aristotle and lesser saints in almost every age tried to demolish these
paradoxes, but not very creditably. Three German professors succeeded
where the saints had failed. At the end of the nineteenth century, it
seemed that Bolzano, Weierstrass and Cantor had laid the infinite to
rest, and Zeno’s paradoxes as well.
The modern method of disposing of the paradoxes is not to dismiss
them as mere sophisms unworthy of serious attention. The history of
mathematics, in fact, recounts a poetic vindication of Zeno’s stand. Zeno
was, at one time, as Bertrand Russell has said, “A notable victim of
posterity’s lack of judgment.” That wrong has been righted. In disposing
of the infinitely small, Weierstrass showed that the moving arrow is really
always at rest, and that we live in Zeno’s changeless world. The work of
Georg Cantor, which we shall soon encounter, showed that if we are to
believe that Achilles can catch the tortoise, we shall have to be prepared
to swallow a bigger paradox than any Zeno ever conceived of: TH E
WHOLE IS NO GREATER THAN MANY OF ITS PARTS!
The infinitely small had been a nuisance for more than two thousand
years. At best, the innumerable opinions it evoked deserved the laconic
verdict of Scotch juries: “Not proven.” Until Weierstrass appeared, the
total advance was a confirmation of Zeno’s argument against motion.
Even the jokes were better. Leibniz, according to Carlyle, made the
mistake of trying to explain the infinitesimal to a Queen—Sophie
Charlotte of Prussia. She informed him that the behavior of her courtiers
made her so familiar with the infinitely small, that she needed no
mathematical tutor to explain it. But philosophers and mathematicians,
according to Russell, “having less acquaintance with the courts,
continued to discuss this topic, though without making any advance.”
Berkeley, with the subtlety and humor necessary for an Irish bishop,
made some pointed attacks on the infinitesimal, during the adolescent
period of the calculus, that had the very best, sharp-witted, scholastic
146 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

sting. One could perhaps speak, if only with poetic fervor, of the infinitely
large, but what, pray, was the infinitely small? The Greeks, with less
than their customary sagacity, introduced it in regarding a circle as
differing infinitesimally from a polygon with a large number of equal
sides. Leibniz used it as the bricks for the infinitesimal calculus. Still, no
one knew what it was. The infinitesimal had wondrous properties. It was
not zero, yet smaller than any quantity. It could be assigned no quantity
or size, yet a sizable number of infinitesimals made a very definite quantity.
Unable to discover its nature, happily able to dispense with it, Weierstrass
interred it alongside of the phlogiston and other once-cherished errors.

The infinitely large offered more stubborn resistance. Whatever it is,

it is a doughty weed. The subject of reams of nonsense, sacred and
profane, it was first discussed fully, logically, and without benefit of
clergy-like prejudices by Bernhard Bolzano. Die Paradoxien des Unendlichen,
a remarkable little volume, appeared posthumously in 1851. Like the
work of another Austrian priest, Gregor Mendel, whose distinguished
treatise on the principles of heredity escaped oblivion only by chance,
this important book, charmingly written, made no great impression on
Bolzano’s contemporaries. It is the creation of a clear, forceful, penetrating
intelligence. For the first time in twenty centuries the infinite was treated
as a problem in science, and not as a problem in theology.
Both Cantor and Dedekind are indebted to Bolzano for the foundations
of the mathematical treatment of the infinite. Among the many paradoxes
he gathered and explained, one, dating from Galileo, illustrates a typical
source of confusion:
Construct a square—ABCD. About the point A as center, with one side as
radius, describe a quarter-circle, intersecting the square at B and D. Draw
PR parallel to AD, cutting AB at P, CD at R, the diagonal AC at N, and the
quarter-circle at M.
By a well-known geometrical theorem, it can be shown that if PN, PM
and PR are radii, the following relationship exists:

Permit PR to approach AD. Then the circle with PN as radius becomes

smaller, and the ring between the circles with PM and PR as radii
becomes correspondingly smaller. Finally, when PR becomes identical
with AD, the radius PN vanishes, leaving the point A, while the ring
between the two circles PM and PR contracts into one periphery with
AD as radius. From equation (1) it may be concluded that the point A takes
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 147

up as much area as the circumference of the circle with AD as

radius .
Bolzano realized that there is only an appearance of a paradox. The two
classes of points, one composed of a single member, the point A, the other
of the points in the circumference of the circle with AB as radius, take up

exactly the same amount of area. The area of both is zero! The paradox
springs from the erroneous conception that the number of points in a
given configuration is an indication of the area which it occupies. Points,
finite or infinite in number, have no dimensions and can therefore occupy
no area.
Through the centuries such paradoxes had piled up. Born of the union
of vague ideas and vague philosophical reflections, they were nurtured
on sloppy thinking. Bolzano cleared away most of the muddle, preparing
the way for Cantor. It is to Cantor that the mathematics of the infinitely
large owes its coming of age.
148 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

Georg Cantor was born in St. Petersburg in 1845, six years before
Bolzano’s book appeared. Though born in Russia, he lived the greater
part of his life in Germany, where he taught at the University of Halle.
While Weierstrass was busy disposing of the infinitesimal, Cantor set
himself the apparently more formidable task at the other pole. The infinitely
small might be laughed out of existence, but who dared laugh at the
infinitely large? Certainly not Cantor! Theological curiosity prompted
his task, but the mathematical interest came to subsume every other.
In dealing with the science of the infinite, Cantor realized that the
first requisite was to define terms. His definition of “infinite class” which
we shall paraphrase, rests upon a paradox. AN INFINITE CLASS HAS THE
U N IQU E PROPE RTY THAT TH E WHOLE I S NO G REATE R THAN SOM E OF
ITS PARTS. That statement is as essential for the mathematics of the infinite
as TH E WH O LE I S G R EATE R THAN ANY O F ITS PARTS is for finite
arithmetic. When we recall that two classes are equal if their elements
can be put into one-to-one correspondence, the latter statement becomes
obvious. Zeno would not have challenged it, in spite of his scepticism
about the obvious. But what is obvious for the finite is false for the
infinite; our extensive experience with finite classes is misleading. Since,
for example, the class of men and the class of mathematicians are both
finite, anyone realizing that some men are not mathematicians would
correctly conclude that the class of men is the larger of the two. He
might also conclude that the number of integers, even and odd, is greater
than the number of even integers. But we see from the following pairing
that he would be mistaken:

Under every integer, odd or even, we may write its double—an even
integer. That is, we place each of the elements of the class of all the
integers, odd and even, into a one-to-one correspondence with the
elements of the class composed solely of even integers. This process may
be continued to the googolplex and beyond.
Now, the class of integers is infinite. No integer, no matter how great,
can describe its cardinality (or numerosity). Yet, since it is possible to
establish a one-to-one correspondence between the class of even numbers
and the class of integers, we have succeeded in counting the class of
even numbers just as we count a finite collection. The two classes being
perfectly matched, we must conclude that they have the same cardinality.
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 149

That their cardinality is the same we know, just as we knew that the
chairs and the people in the hall were equal in number when every
chair was occupied and no one was left standing. Thus, we arrive at the
fundamental paradox of all infinite classes:—There exist component parts
of an infinite class which are just as great as the class itself. THE WHOLE
IS NO GREATER THAN SOME OF ITS PARTS !
The class composed of the even integers is thinned out as compared
with the class of all integers, but evidently “thinning out” has not the
slightest effect on its cardinality. Moreover, there is almost no limit to
the number of times this process can be repeated. For instance, there are
as many square numbers and cube numbers as there are integers. The
appropriate pairings are:

Indeed, from any denumerable class there can always be removed a

denumerably infinite number of denumerably infinite classes without
affecting the cardinality of the original class.

Infinite classes which can be put into one-to-one correspondence with

the integers, and thus “counted,” Cantor called countable, or denumerably
infinite. Since all finite sets are countable, and we can assign to each one
a number, it is natural to try to extend this notion and assign to the class
of all integers a number representing its cardinality. Yet, it is obvious
from our description of “infinite class” that no ordinary integer would
be adequate to describe the cardinality of the whole class of integers. In
effect, it would be asking a snake to swallow itself entirely. Thus, the
first of the transfinite numbers was created to describe the cardinality of
countable infinite classes. Etymologically old, mathematically new, Ꭽ
(aleph), the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, was suggested. However,
Cantor finally decided to use the compound symbol Ꭽ0 (Aleph-Null). If
asked, “How many integers are there?” it would be correct to reply,
“There are Ꭽ0 integers.”
Because he suspected that there were other transfinite numbers, in fact
an infinite number of transfinites, and the cardinality of the integers the
smallest, Cantor affixed to the first Ꭽ a small zero as subscript. The cardinality
of a denumerably infinite class is therefore referred to as Ꭽ0 (Aleph-
150 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

Null). The anticipated transfinite numbers form a hierarchy of alephs:

Ꭽ 0, Ꭽ 1, Ꭽ 2, Ꭽ 3 . . .
All this may seem very strange, and it is quite excusable for the reader
by now to be thoroughly bewildered. Yet, if you have followed the
previous reasoning step by step, and will go to the trouble of rereading,
you will see that nothing which has been said is repugnant to straight
thinking. Having established what is meant by counting in the finite
domain, and what is meant by number, we decided to extend the counting
process to infinite classes. As for our right to follow such a procedure,
we have the same right, for example, as those who decided that man had
crawled on the surface of the earth long enough and that it was about
time for him to fly. It is our right to venture forth in the world of ideas
as it is our right to extend our horizons in the physical universe. One
restraint alone is laid upon us in these adventures of ideas: that we
abide by the rules of logic.
Upon extending the counting process it was evident at once that no
finite number could adequately describe an infinite class. If any number
of ordinary arithmetic describes the cardinality of a class, that class must
be finite, even though there were not enough ink or enough space or
enough time to write the number out. We shall then require an entirely
new kind of number, nowhere to be found in finite arithmetic, to describe
the cardinality of an infinite class. Accordingly, the totality of integers
was assigned the cardinality “aleph.” Suspecting that there were other
infinite classes with a cardinality greater than that of the totality of integers,
we supposed a whole hierarchy of alephs, of which the cardinal number
of the totality of integers was named Aleph-Null to indicate it was the
smallest of the transfinites.
Having had an interlude in the form of a summary, let us turn once
more to scrutinize the alephs, to find if, upon closer acquaintance, they
may not become easier to understand.
The arithmetic of the alephs bears little resemblance to that of the
finite integers. The immodest behavior of Ꭽ0 is typical.
A simple problem in addition looks like this:

The multiplication table would be easy to teach, easier to learn:

 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 151

where n represents any finite number.

Also,

And thus,

when n is a finite integer.

There seems to be no variation of the theme; the monotony appears
inescapable. But it is all very deceptive and treacherous. We go along
obtaining the same result, no matter what we do to Ꭽ0, when suddenly
we try:

This operation, at last, creates a new transfinite. But before considering

it, there is more to be said about countable classes.

Common sense says that there are many more fractions than integers,
for between any two integers there is an infinite number of fractions.
Alas—common sense is amidst alien corn in the land of the infinite.
Cantor discovered a simple but elegant proof that the rational fractions
form a denumerably infinite sequence equivalent to the class of integers.
Whence, this sequence must have the same cardinality.7
The set of all rational fractions is arranged, not in order of increasing

7. It has been suggested that at this point the tired reader puts the book down with a sigh—
and goes to the movies. We can only offer in mitigation that this proof, like the one
which follows on the noncountability of the real numbers, is tough and no bones about
it. You may grit your teeth and try to get what you can out of them, or conveniently
omit them. The essential thing to come away with is that Cantor found that the rational
fractions are countable but that the set of real numbers is not. Thus, in spite of what
common sense tells you, there are no more fractions than there are integers and there
are more real numbers between 0 and 1 than there are elements in the whole class of
integers.
152 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

magnitude, but in order of ascending numerators and denominators in an

array:

Since each fraction may be written as a pair of integers, i.e., 3 4 as (3,4),

the familiar one-to-one correspondence with the integers may be effected.
This is illustrated in the above array by the arrows.

Cantor also found, by means of a proof (too technical to concern us

here) based on the “height” of algebraic equations, that the class of all
algebraic numbers, numbers which are the solutions of algebraic equations
with integer coefficients, of the form:

is denumerably infinite.
But Cantor felt that there were other transfinites, that there were classes
which were not countable, which could not be put into one-to-one
correspondence with the integers. And one of his greatest triumphs came
when he succeeded in showing that there are classes with a cardinality
greater than Ꭽ0.
The class of real numbers composed of the rational and irrational
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 153

numbers 8 is such a class. It contains those irrationals which are algebraic

as well as those which are not. The latter are called transcendental numbers.9
Two important transcendental numbers were known to exist in Cantor’s
time: ␲, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, and e,
the base of the natural logarithms. Little more was known about the
class of transcendentals: it was an enigma. What Cantor had to prove,
in order to show that the class of real numbers was nondenumerable
(i.e., too big to be counted by the class of integers), was the unlikely fact
that the class of transcendentals was nondenumerable. Since the rational
and the algebraic numbers were known to be denumerable, and the sum
of any denumerable number of denumerable classes is also a denumerable
class, the sole remaining class which could make the totality of real
numbers nondenumerable was the class of transcendentals.
He was able to devise such a proof. If it can be shown that the class of
real numbers between 0 and 1 is nondenumerable, it will follow a fortiori
that all the real numbers are nondenumerable. Employing a device often
used in advanced mathematics, the reductio ad absurdum, Cantor assumed
that to be true which he suspected was false, and then showed that this
assumption led to a contradiction. He assumed that the real numbers
between 0 and 1 were countable and could, therefore, be paired with
the integers. Having proved that this assumption led to a contradiction,
it followed that its opposite, namely, that the real numbers could not be
paired with the integers (and were therefore not countable), was true.
To count the real numbers betwen 0 and 1, it is required that they all
be expressed in a uniform way and a method of writing them down in
order be devised so that they can be paired one to one with the integers.
The first requirement can be fulfilled, for it is possible to express every
real number as a nonterminating decimal. Thus, for example: 10

Now, the second requirement confronts us. How shall we make the

8. Irrational numbers are numbers which cannot be expressed as rational fractions. For
Example, , , e, ␲ . The class of real numbers is made up of rationals like 1, 2, 3,
1 , 17
4 32 , and irrationals as above.
9. A transcendental number is one which is not the root of an algebraic equation with
integer coefficients.
1 0 . Any terminating decimal, such as .4, has a nonterminating form .3999 . . .
154 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

pairings? What system may be devised to ensure the appearance of every

decimal? We did find a method for ensuring the appearance of every
rational fraction. Of course, we could not actually write them all, any
more than we could actually write all the integers; but the method of
increasing numerators and denominators was so explicit that, if we had
had an infinite time in which to do it, we could actually have set down
all the fractions and have been certain that we had not omitted any. Or,
to put it another way: It was always certain and determinate after a fraction
had been paired with an integer, what the next fraction would be, and
the next, and the next, and so on.
On the other hand, when a real number, expressed as a nonterminating
decimal, is paired with an integer, what method is there for determining
what the next decimal in order should be? You have only to ask yourself,
which shall be the first of the nonterminating decimals to pair with the
integer 1, and you have an inkling of the difficulty of the problem.
Cantor however assumed that such a pairing does exist, without attempting
to give its explicit form. His scheme was: With the integer 1 pair the
decimal .a1a2a3 . . . , with the integer 2, .b1b2b3 . . . , etc. Each of the letters
represents a digit of the nonterminating decimal in which it appears.
The determinate array of pairing between the decimals and the integers
would then be:

That was Cantor’s array. But at once it was evident that it glaringly
exhibited the very contradiction for which he had been seeking. And in
this defeat lay his triumph. For no matter how the decimals are arranged,
by whatever system, by whatever scheme, it is always possible to construct
an infinity of others which are not present in the array. The point is
worth repeating: having contrived a general form for an array which we
believed would include every decimal, we find, in spite of all our efforts,
that some decimals are bound to be omitted. This, Cantor showed by his
famous “diagonal proof.” The conditions for determining a decimal
omitted from the array are simple. It must differ from the first decimal
in the array in its first place, from the second decimal in the array
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 155

in its second place, from the third decimal in its third place, and so on.
But then, it must differ from every decimal in the entire array in at least one
place. If (as illustrated in the figure) we draw a diagonal line through
our model array and write a new decimal, each digit of which shall
differ from every digit intercepted by the diagonal, this new decimal
cannot be found in the array.

The new decimal may be written:

where α1 differs from a1, α2 differs from b2, α3 from c3, α4 from d4, α5 from
e5, etc. Accordingly, it will differ from each decimal in at least one place,
from the nth decimal in at least its nth place. This proves conclusively
that there is no way of including all the decimals in any possible array,
no way of pairing them off with the integers. Therefore, as Cantor set
out to prove:
1. The class of transcendental numbers is not only infinite, but also not
countable, i.e., nondenumerably infinite.
2. The real numbers between 0 and 1 are infinite and not countable.
3. A fortiori, the class of all real numbers is nondenumerable.

To the noncountable class of real numbers, Cantor assigned a new

transfinite cardinal. It was one of the alephs, but which one remains
unsolved to this day. It is suspected that this transfinite, called the “cardinal
of the continuum,” which is represented by c or C, is identical with Ꭽ1. But
a proof acceptable to most mathematicians has yet to be devised.
The arithmetic of C is much the same as that of Ꭽ0. The multiplication
table has the same dependable monotone quality. But when C is combined
with Ꭽ0, it swallows it completely. Thus:
156 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

Again, we hope for a variation of the theme when we come to the process
of involution. Yet, for the moment, we are disappointed, for .
does not equal Ꭽ0, so C does not equal C.
c
But just as
We are now in a position to solve our earlier problem in involution,
c
for actually Cantor found that (Ꭽ0)Ꭽ 0 = C. Likewise C gives rise to a new
transfinite, greater than C. This transfinite represents the cardinality of
the class of all one-valued functions. It is also one of the Ꭽ’s, but again,
which one is unknown. It is often designated by the letter F.11 In general,
the process of involution, when repeated, continues to generate higher
transfinites.
Just as the integers served as a measuring rod for classes with the
cardinality Ꭽ0, the class of real numbers serves as a measuring rod for
classes with the cardinality C. Indeed, there are classes of geometric
elements which can be measured in no other way except by the class of
real numbers.
From the geometric notion of a point, the idea is evolved that on any
given line segment there are an infinite number of points. The points on
a line segment are also, as mathematicians say, “everywhere dense.” This
means that between any two points there is an infinitude of others. The
concept of two immediately adjoining points is, therefore, meaningless.
This property of being “everywhere dense,” constitutes one of the essential
characteristics of a continuum. Cantor, in referring to the “cardinality of
the continuum,” recognized that it applies alike to the class of real numbers
and the class of points on a line segment. Both are everywhere dense,
and both have the same cardinality, C. In other words, it is possible to
pair the points on a line segment with the real numbers.
Classes with the cardinality C possess a property similar to classes
with the cardinality Ꭽ0: they may be thinned out without in any way
affecting their cardinality. In this connection, we see in very striking
fashion another illustration of the principle of transfinite arithmetic,
that the whole is no greater than many of its parts. For instance, it can be
proved that there are as many points on a line one foot long as there are
on a line one yard long. The line segment AB in the figure below is
[about] three times as long as the line A′B′. Nevertheless, it is possible to
put the class of all points on the segment AB into a one-to-one
correspondence with the class of points on the segment A′B′.

1 1 . A simple geometric interpretation of the class of all one-valued functions F is the

following: With each point of a line segment, associate a color of the spectrum. The
class F is then composed of all possible combinations of colors and points that can be
conceived.
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 157

Let L be the intersection of the lines AA′ and BB′. If then to any point
M of AB, there corresponds a point M′ of A′B′, which is on the line LM,
we have established the desired correspondence between the class of
points on A′B′ and those on AB. It is easy to see intuitively and to prove
geometrically that this is always possible, and that, therefore, the
cardinality of the two classes of points is the same. Thus, since A′B′ is
smaller than AB, it may be considered a proper part of AB, and we have
again established that an infinite class may contain as proper parts,
subclasses equivalent to it.
There are more startling examples in geometry which illustrate the
power of the continuum. Although the statement that a line one inch in
length contains as many points as a line stretching around the equator,
or as a line stretching from the earth to the most distant stars, is startling
enough, it is fantastic to think that a line segment one-millionth of an
inch long has as many points as there are in all three-dimensional space
in the entire universe. Nevertheless, this is true. Once the principles of
Cantor’s theory of transfinites is understood, such statements cease to
sound like the extravagances of a mathematical madman. The oddities,
as Russell has said, “then become no odder than the people at the
antipodes who used to be thought impossible because they would find it
so inconvenient to stand on their heads.” Even conceding that the
treatment of the infinite is a form of mathematical madness, one is forced
to admit, as does the Duke in Measure for Measure:
If she be mad—as I believe no other—
Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense,
Such a dependency of thing on thing,
As e’er I heard in madness.

Until now we have deliberately avoided a definition of “infinite class.”

158 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

But at last our equipment makes it possible to do so. We have seen that
an infinite class, whether its cardinality is Ꭽ 0, C, or greater, can be
thinned out in a countless variety of ways, without affecting its
cardinality. In short, the whole is no greater than many of its parts.
Now, this property does not belong to finite classes at all; it belongs
only to infinite classes. Hence, it is a unique method of determining
whether a class is finite or infinite. Thus, our definition reads: An
infinite class is one which can be put into one-to-one reciprocal correspondence with
a proper subset of itself.
Equipped with this definition and the few ideas we have gleaned we
may re-examine some of the paradoxes of Zeno. That of Achilles and the
tortoise may be expressed as follows: Achilles and the tortoise, running
the same course, must each occupy the same number of distinct positions
during their race. However, if Achilles is to catch his more leisurely and
determined opponent, he will have to occupy more positions than the
tortoise, in the same elapsed period of time. Since this is manifestly
impossible, you may put your money on the tortoise.
But don’t be too hasty. There are better ways of saving money than
merely counting change. In fact, you had best bet on Achilles after all,
for he is likely to win the race. Even though we may not have realized it,
we have just finished proving that he could overtake the tortoise by
showing that a line a millionth of an inch long has just as many points
as a line stretching from the earth to the farthest star. In other words, the
points on the tiny line segment can be placed into one-to-one
correspondence with the points on the great line, for there is no relation
between the number of points on a line and its length. But this reveals
the error in thinking that Achilles cannot catch the tortoise. The
statement that Achilles must occupy as many distinct positions as the
tortoise is correct. So is the statement that he must travel a greater distance
than the tortoise in the same time. The only incorrect statement is the
inference that since he must occupy the same number of positions as the
tortoise he cannot travel further while doing so. Even though the classes
of points on each line, which correspond to the several positions of both
Achilles and the tortoise are equivalent, the line representing the path
of Achilles is much longer than that representing the path of the tortoise.
Achilles may travel much further than the tortoise without successively
touching more points.
The solution of the paradox involving the arrow in flight requires a
word about another type of continuum. It is convenient and certainly
familiar to regard time as a continuum. The time continuum has the same
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 159

properties as the space continuum: the successive instants in any elapsed

portion of time, just as the points on a line, may be put into one-to-one
correspondence with the class of real numbers; between any two instants
of time an infinity of others may be interpolated; time also has the
mathematical property mentioned before—it is everywhere dense.
Zeno’s argument stated that at every instant of time the arrow was
somewhere, in some place or position, and therefore, could not at any
instant be in motion. Although the statement that the arrow had at every
moment to be in some place is true, the conclusion that, therefore, it
could not be moving is absurd. Our natural tendency to accept this
absurdity as true springs from our firm conviction that motion is entirely
different from rest. We are not confused about the position of a body
when it is at rest—we feel there is no mystery about the state of rest. We
should feel the same when we consider a body in motion.
When a body is at rest, it is in one position at one instant of time and
at a later instant it is still in the same position. When a body is in motion,
there is a one-to-one correspondence between every instant of time and

At the times shown,

the Statue of Liberty is at the point shown,
while the taxi’s passengers see the different scenes shown at the right.
160 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

every new position. To make this clear we may construct two tables: One
will describe a body at rest, the other, a body in motion. The “rest” table
will tell the life history and the life geography of the Statue of Liberty,
while the “motion” table will describe the odyssey of an automobile.
The tables indicate that to every instant of time there corresponds a position
of the Statue of Liberty and of the taxi. There is a one-to-one space-time
correspondence for rest as well as for motion.
No paradox is concealed in the puzzle of the arrow when we look at
our table. Indeed, it would be strange if there were gaps in the table; if
it were impossible, at any instant, to determine exactly what the position
of the arrow is.
Most of us would swear by the existence of motion, but we are not
accustomed to think of it as something which makes an object occupy
different positions at different instants of time. We are apt to think that
motion endows an object with the strange property of being continually
nowhere. Impeded by the limitations of our senses which prevent us
from perceiving that an object in motion simply occupies one position
after another and does so rather quickly, we foster an illusion about
the nature of motion and weave it into a fairy tale. Mathematics helps
us to analyze and clarify what we perceive, to a point where we are
forced to acknowledge, if we no longer wish to be guided by fairy
tales, that we live either in Mr. Russell’s changeless world or in a
world where motion is but a form of rest. The story of motion is the
same as the story of rest. It is the same story told at a quicker tempo.
The story of rest is: “It is here.” The story of motion is: “It is here, it is
there.” Because, in this respect, it resembles Hamlet’s father’s ghost is
no reason to doubt its existence. Most of our beliefs are chained to less
substantial phantoms. Motion is perhaps not easy for our senses to
grasp, but with the aid of mathematics, its essence may first be properly
understood.

At the beginning of the twentieth century it was generally conceded

that Cantor’s work had clarified the concept of the infinite so that it
could be talked of and treated like any other respectable mathematical
concept. The controversy which arises wherever mathematical
philosophers meet, on paper, or in person, shows that this was a mistaken
view. In its simplest terms this controversy, so far as it concerns the
infinite, centers about the questions: Does the infinite exist? Is there
such a thing as an infinite class? Such questions can have little meaning
unless the term mathematical “existence” is first explained.
 B EYON D TH E GO OGOL 161

In his famous “Agony in Eight Fits,” Lewis Carroll hunted the snark.
Nobody was acquainted with the snark or knew much about it except
that it existed and that it was best to keep away from a boojum. The
infinite may be a boojum, too, but its existence in any form is a matter of
considerable doubt. Boojum or garden variety, the infinite certainly does
not exist in the same sense that we say, “There are fish in the sea.” For
that matter, the statement, “There is a number called 7,” refers to
something which has a different existence from the fish in the sea.
“Existence” in the mathematical sense is wholly different from the
existence of objects in the physical world. A billiard ball may have as
one of its properties, in addition to whiteness, roundness, hardness,
etc., a relation of circumference to diameter involving the number π.
We may agree that the billiard ball and ␲ both exist; we must also agree
that the billiard ball and ␲ lead different kinds of lives.
There have been as many views on the problem of existence since
Euclid and Aristotle as there have been philosophers. In modern times,
the various schools of mathematical philosophy, the Logistic school,
Formalists, and Intuitionists, have all disputed the somewhat less than
glassy essence of mathematical being. All these disputes are beyond our
ken, our scope, or our intention. A stranger company even than the
tortoise, Achilles, and the arrow, have defended the existence of infinite
classes—defended it in the same sense that they would defend the
existence of the number 7. The Formalists, who think mathematics is a
meaningless game, but play it with no less gusto, and the Logistic school,
which considers that mathematics is a branch of logic—both have taken
Cantor’s part and have defended the alephs. The defense rests on the
notion of self-consistency. “Existence” is a metaphysical expression tied
up with notions of being and other bugaboos worse even than boojums.
But the expression, “self-consistent proposition” sounds like the language
of logic and has its odor of sanctity. A proposition which is not self-
contradictory is, according to the Logistic school, a true existence
statement. From this standpoint the greater part of Cantor’s mathematics
of the infinite is unassailable.
New problems and new paradoxes, however, have been discovered
arising out of parts of Cantor’s structure because of certain difficulties
already inherent in classical logic. They center about the use of the
word “all.” The paradoxes encountered in ordinary parlance, such as
“All generalities are false including this one,” constitute a real problem
in the foundations of logic, just as did the Epimenides paradox whence
they sprang. In the Epimenides, a Cretan is made to say that all Cretans are
162 Edward Kasner & J. R. Newman

liars, which, if true, makes the speaker a liar for telling the truth. To
dispose of this type of paradox the Logistic school invented a “Theory
of Types.” The theory of types and the axiom of reducibility on which it
is based must be accepted as axioms to avoid paradoxes of this kind. In
order to accomplish this a reform of classical logic is required which has
already been undertaken. Like most reforms it is not wholly satisfactory—
even to the reformers—but by means of their theory of types the last
vestige of inconsistency has been driven out of the house that Cantor
built. The theory of transfinites may still be so much nonsense to many
mathematicians, but it is certainly consistent. The serious charge Henri
Poincaré expressed in his aphorism, La logistique n’est plus stérile: elle engendre
la contradiction [Logic is sterile no longer: it is engendering contradiction],
has been successfully rebutted by the logistic doctrine so far as the infinite
is concerned.
To Cantor’s alephs then, we may ascribe the same existence as to the
number 7. An existence statement free from self-contradiction may be
made relative to either. For that matter, there is no valid reason to trust
in the finite any more than in the infinite. It is as permissible to discard
the infinite as it is to reject the impressions of one’s senses. It is neither
more, nor less scientific to do so. In the final analysis, this is a matter of
faith and taste, but not on a par with rejecting the belief in Santa Claus.
Infinite classes, judged by finite standards, generate paradoxes much
more absurd and a great deal less pleasing than the belief in Santa Claus;
but when they are judged by the appropriate standards, they lose their
odd appearance, behave as predictably as any finite integer.
At last in its proper setting, the infinite has assumed a respectable
place next to the finite, just as real and just as dependable, even though
wholly different in character. Whatever the infinite may be, it is no
longer a purple cow.

The foregoing consists of Chapters I and II

from Kasner and Newman’s MATHEMATICS AND THE IMAGINATION.
 Tobias Dantzig
1884–1956

T obias Dantzig was born in Russia in 1884. As a young man he

studied in Paris under several great French mathematicians, among
them Henri Poincaré. At an early age he decided that mathematics
should be acquired by study of the works of the masters. This
conviction led him to pursue his studies back through the medieval
ages to the Greeks and their discoveries in science.
Dantzig went to the United States in 1910. After taking his
doctorate at the University of Indiana, he taught at Columbia and at
the University of Maryland. At various times he served as
mathematical consultant for industry. This acquaintance with
industrial problems gave him a lifelong interest in the applications
of mathematics. After his retirement from university teaching, he
continued to write and to give courses in the history of mathematics.
He died in 1956.
A lover of stories, Dantzig never forgot a tale. This vast reservoir
was put to good use in the classroom and in his writings. He was
intensely interested in mathematicians as people, and his writings
are spiced with colorful anecdotes about famous scientific
personalities. Among his works are The Story of Geometry, Aspects of
Science, The Bequest of the Greeks, and Number: The Language of Science.
The last-named book was praised by Albert Einstein as the best
book on the evolution of mathematics that had come into his hands.
This work broke a new path. It was the first attempt to bring
mathematics to the public in a manner suited to the mathematically
untrained. The following two selections are taken from this
pioneering effort. They both deal with the evolution of the number
concept.
163
164 Tobias Dantzig

F ingerprints shows man at a very early stage in his attempt to gain

understanding and power over the world. Whatever is counted is
somehow captured, as in a net. When primitive man fashioned this
net, its design was almost inevitably determined by the fact that he
had ten fingers. Before he had words or written symbols for
numbers, he possessed on his own hands the tools for counting.
Through the ages the net has become larger and more intricate. It
has been cast beyond the world into the universe. But it still carries
the imprint of man’s physical make-up. We count by tens.
“Has the concept [of number] been born of experience, or has
experience merely served to render explicit what was already latent
in the primitive mind?” Dantzig asks a question on which there is a
long history of speculation. Various and conflicting answers are
found in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Russell, and James.
The Empty Column is the story of how mathematics was stymied
for centuries for want of a symbol—our modern zero. Everyday
calculations remained in the hands of the experts long after
commerce and industry cried out for an arithmetic that could be
understood by everyone.
Why did this notation come so late? Alfred North Whitehead
says: “The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the
operations of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish. It is in a
way the most civilized of all the cardinals, and its use is only forced
on us by the needs of cultivated modes of thought.”
To this story of the growth of our modern number system, Dantzig
brings a lively sense of the human qualities involved. “It is not a
story of brilliant achievement, heroic deeds, or noble sacrifice. It is
a story of blind stumbling and chance discovery, of groping in the
dark and refusing to admit the light. It is a story replete with
obscurantism and prejudice, of sound judgment often eclipsed by
loyalty to tradition, and of reason long held subservient to custom.
In short, it is a human story.”
 Fingerprints

1.
an, even in the lower stages of development, possesses a
faculty which, for want of a better name, I shall call number sense. This
faculty permits him to recognize that something has changed in a small
collection when, without his direct knowledge, an object has been
removed from or added to the collection.
Number sense should not be confused with counting, which is
probably of a much later vintage, and involves, as we shall see, a rather
intricate mental process. Counting, so far as we know, is an attribute
exclusively human, whereas some brute species seem to possess a
rudimentary number sense akin to our own. At least, such is the opinion
of competent observers of animal behavior, and the theory is supported
by a weighty mass of evidence.
Many birds, for instance, possess such a number sense. If a nest
contains four eggs one can safely be taken, but when two are removed
the bird generally deserts. In some unaccountable way the bird can
distinguish two from three. But this faculty is by no means confined to
birds. In fact the most striking instance we know is that of the insect
called the “solitary wasp.” The mother wasp lays her eggs in individual
cells and provides each egg with a number of live caterpillars on which
the young feed when hatched. Now, the number of victims is remarkably
constant for a given species of wasp: some species provide 5, others 12,
others again as high as 24 caterpillars per cell. But most remarkable is
the case of the Genus Eumenus, a variety in which the male is much smaller
than the female. In some mysterious way the mother knows whether the
egg will produce a male or a female grub and apportions the quantity of
food accordingly; she does not change the species or size of the prey,
but if the egg is male she supplies it with five victims, if female with ten.

165
166 Tobias Dantzig
 F I N G E R P R I NTS 167

The regularity in the action of the wasp and the fact that this action is
connected with a fundamental function in the life of the insect make
this last case less convincing than the one which follows. Here the action
of the bird seems to border on the conscious:
A squire was determined to shoot a crow which made its nest in the
watchtower of his estate. Repeatedly he had tried to surprise the bird,
but in vain: at the approach of man the crow would leave its nest.
From a distant tree it would watchfully wait until the man had left the
tower and then return to its nest. One day the squire hit upon a ruse:
two men entered the tower, one remained within, the other came out
and went on. But the bird was not deceived: it kept away until the
man within came out. The experiment was repeated on the succeeding
days with two, three, then four men, yet without success. Finally, five
men were sent: as before, all entered the tower, and one remained
while the other four came out and went away. Here the crow lost count.
Unable to distinguish between four and five it promptly returned to its
nest.

2. Two arguments may be raised against such evidence. The first is

that the species possessing such a number sense are exceedingly few,
that no such faculty has been found among mammals, and that even the
monkeys seem to lack it. The second argument is that in all known cases
the number sense of animals is so limited in scope as to be ignored.
Now the first point is well taken. It is indeed a remarkable fact that
the faculty of perceiving number, in one form or another, seems to be
confined to some insects and birds and to men. Observation and
experiments on dogs, horses and other domestic animals have failed to
reveal any number sense.
As to the second argument, it is of little value, because the scope of
the human number sense is also quite limited. In every practical case
where civilized man is called upon to discern number, he is consciously
or unconsciously aiding his direct number sense with such artifices as
symmetric pattern reading, mental grouping or counting. Counting
especially has become such an integral part of our mental equipment
that psychological tests on our number perception are fraught with great
difficulties. Nevertheless some progress has been made; carefully
conducted experiments lead to the inevitable conclusion that the direct
visual number sense of the average civilized man rarely extends beyond
four, and that the tactile sense is still more limited in scope.
Anthropological studies on primitive peoples corroborate these results
168 Tobias Dantzig

to a remarkable degree. They reveal that those savages who have not
reached the stage of finger counting are almost completely deprived of all
perception of number. Such is the case among numerous tribes in
Australia, the South Sea Islands, South America, and Africa. Curr,
who has made an extensive study of primitive Australia, holds that but
few of the natives are able to discern four, and that no Australian in
his wild state can perceive seven. The Bushmen of South Africa have
no number words beyond one, two and many, and these words are so
inarticulate that it may be doubted whether the natives attach a clear
meaning to them.
We have no reasons to believe and many reasons to doubt that our
own remote ancestors were better equipped, since practically all
European languages bear traces of such early limitations. The
English thrice, just like the Latin ter, has the double meaning: three
times, and many. There is a plausible connection between the Latin
tres, three, and trans, beyond; the same can be said regarding the French
très, very, and trois, three.
The genesis of number is hidden behind the impenetrable veil of
countless prehistoric ages. Has the concept been born of experience, or
has experience merely served to render explicit what was already latent
in the primitive mind? Here is a fascinating subject for metaphysical
speculation, but for this very reason beyond the scope of this study.
If we are to judge of the development of our own remote ancestors by
the mental state of contemporary tribes we cannot escape the conclusion
that the beginnings were extremely modest. A rudimentary number sense,
not greater in scope than that possessed by birds, was the nucleus from
which the number concept grew. And there is little doubt that, left to
this direct number perception, man would have advanced no further in
the art of reckoning than the birds did. But through a series of remarkable
circumstances man has learned to aid his exceedingly limited perception
of number by an artifice which was destined to exert a tremendous
influence on his future life. This artifice is counting, and it is to counting
that we owe the extraordinary progress which we have made in expressing
our universe in terms of number.

3. There are primitive languages which have words for every color of
the rainbow but have no word for color; there are others which have all
number words but no word for number. The same is true of other
conceptions. The English language is very rich in native expressions
for particular types of collections: flock, herd, set, lot and bunch apply to
 F I N G E R P R I NTS 169

special cases; yet the words collection and aggregate are of foreign
extraction.
The concrete preceded the abstract. “It must have required many ages
to discover,” says Bertrand Russell, “that a brace of pheasants and a couple
of days were both instances of the number two.” To this day we have
quite a few ways of expressing the idea two: pair, couple, set, team, twin,
brace, etc., etc.
A striking example of this extreme concreteness of the early number
concept is the Thimshian language of a British Columbia tribe. There
we find seven distinct sets of number words: one for flat objects and
animals; one for round objects and time; one for counting men; one for
long objects and trees; one for canoes; one for measures; one for counting
when no definite object is referred to. The last is probably a later
development; the others must be relics of the earliest days when the
tribesmen had not yet learned to count.
It is counting that consolidated the concrete and therefore
heterogeneous notion of plurality, so characteristic of primitive man,
into the homogeneous abstract number concept, which made mathematics
possible.

4. Yet, strange though it may seem, it is possible to arrive at a logical,

clear-cut number concept without bringing in the artifices of counting.
We enter a hall. Before us are two collections: the seats of the
auditorium, and the audience. Without counting we can ascertain whether
the two collections are equal and, if not equal, which is the greater. For
if every seat is taken and no man is standing, we know without counting that
the two collections are equal. If every seat is taken and some in the
audience are standing, we know without counting that there are more people
than seats.
We derive this knowledge through a process which dominates all
mathematics and which has received the name of one-to-one correspondence.
It consists in assigning to every object of one collection an object of the
other, the process being continued until one of the collections, or both,
are exhausted.
The number technique of many primitive peoples is confined to just
such a matching or tallying. They keep the record of their herds and
armies by means of notches cut in a tree or pebbles gathered in a pile.
That our own ancestors were adept in such methods is evidenced by the
etymology of the words tally and calculate, of which the first comes from
the Latin talea, cutting, and the second from the Latin calculus, pebble.
170 Tobias Dantzig

It would seem at first that the process of correspondence gives only

a means for comparing two collections, but is incapable of creating
number in the absolute sense of the word. Yet the transition from relative
number to absolute is not difficult. It is necessary only to create model
collections, each typifying a possible collection. Estimating any given
collection is then reduced to the selection among the available models
of one which can be matched with the given collection member by
member.
Primitive man finds such models in his immediate environment: the
wings of a bird may symbolize the number two, clover-leaves three, the
legs of an animal four, the fingers on his own hand five. Evidence of
this origin of number words can be found in many a primitive language.
Of course, once the number word has been created and adopted, it
becomes as good a model as the object it originally represented. The
necessity of discriminating between the name of the borrowed object
and the number symbol itself would naturally tend to bring about a
change in sound, until in the course of time the very connection between
the two is lost to memory. As man learns to rely more and more on his
language, the sounds supersede the images for which they stood, and
the originally concrete models take the abstract form of number words.
Memory and habit lend concreteness to these abstract forms, and so
mere words become measures of plurality.

5. The concept I just described is called cardinal number. The cardinal

number rests on the principle of correspondence: it implies no counting.
To create a counting process it is not enough to have a motley array of
models, comprehensive though this latter may be. We must devise a
number system: our set of models must be arranged in an ordered sequence,
a sequence which progresses in the sense of growing magnitude, the
natural sequence: one, two, three. . . . Once this system is created, counting
a collection means assigning to every member a term in the natural sequence
in ordered succession until the collection is exhausted. The term of the
natural sequence assigned to the last member of the collection is called
the ordinal number of the collection.
The ordinal system may take the concrete form of a rosary, but this, of
course, is not essential. The ordinal system acquires existence when the
first few number words have been committed to memory in their ordered
succession, and a phonetic scheme has been devised to pass from any larger
number to its successor.
We have learned to pass with such facility from cardinal to ordinal
 F I N G E R P R I NTS 171

number that the two aspects appear to us as one. To determine the plurality
of a collection, i.e., its cardinal number, we do not bother any more to
find a model collection with which we can match it—we count it. And to
the fact that we have learned to identify the two aspects of number is
due our progress in mathematics. For whereas in practice we are really
interested in the cardinal number, this latter is incapable of creating an
arithmetic. The operations of arithmetic are based on the tacit assumption
that we can always pass from any number to its successor, and this is the essence
of the ordinal concept.
And so matching by itself is incapable of creating an art of reckoning.
Without our ability to arrange things in ordered succession little progress
could have been made. Correspondence and succession, the two
principles which permeate all mathematics—nay, all realms of exact
thought—are woven into the very fabric of our number system.

6. It is natural to inquire at this point whether this subtle distinction

between cardinal and ordinal number had any part in the early history
of the number concept. One is tempted to surmise that the cardinal
number, based on matching only, preceded the ordinal number, which
requires both matching and ordering. Yet the most careful investigations
into primitive culture and philology fail to reveal any such precedence.
Wherever any number technique exists at all, both aspects of number
are found.
But, also, wherever a counting technique, worthy of the name, exists
at all, finger counting has been found to either precede it or accompany
it. And in his fingers man possesses a device which permits him to pass
imperceptibly from cardinal to ordinal number. Should he want to
indicate that a certain collection contains four objects he will raise or
turn down four fingers simultaneously; should he want to count the same
collection he will raise or turn down these fingers in succession. In the
first case he is using his fingers as a cardinal model, in the second as
an ordinal system. Unmistakable traces of this origin of counting are
found in practically every primitive language. In most of these tongues
the number “five” is expressed by “hand,” the number “ten” by “two
hands,” or sometimes by “man.” Furthermore, in many primitive
languages the number words up to four are identical with the names
given to the four fingers.
The more civilized languages underwent a process of attrition which
obliterated the original meaning of the words. Yet here too “fingerprints”
are not lacking. Compare the Sanskrit panca, five, with the related
172 Tobias Dantzig

Persian pentcha, hand; the Russian piat, five, with piast, the outstretched
hand.
It is to his articulate ten fingers that man owes his success in
calculation. It is these fingers which have taught him to count and thus
extend the scope of number indefinitely. Without this device the number
technique of man could not have advanced far beyond the rudimentary
number sense. And it is reasonable to conjecture that without our fingers
the development of number, and consequently that of the exact sciences,
to which we owe our material and intellectual progress, would have
been hopelessly dwarfed.

7. And yet, except that our children still learn to count on their fingers
and that we ourselves sometimes resort to it as a gesture of emphasis,
finger counting is a lost art among modern civilized people. The advent
of writing, simplified numeration, and universal schooling have rendered
the art obsolete and superfluous. Under the circumstances it is only
natural for us to underestimate the role that finger counting has played
in the history of reckoning. Only a few hundred years ago finger counting
was such a widespread custom in Western Europe that no manual of
arithmetic was complete unless it gave full instructions in the method.
(See figure on page 166.)
The art of using his fingers in counting and in performing the simple
operations of arithmetic was then one of the accomplishments of an
educated man. The greatest ingenuity was displayed in devising rules
for adding and multiplying numbers on one’s fingers. Thus, to this day,
the peasant of central France (Auvergne) uses a curious method for
multiplying numbers above 5. If he wishes to multiply 9 × 8, he bends
down 4 fingers on his left hand (4 being the excess of 9 over 5), and 3
fingers on his right hand (8 – 5 = 3). Then the number of the bentdown
fingers gives him the tens of the result (4 + 3 = 7), while the product of
the unbent fingers gives him the units (1 × 2 = 2).
Artifices of the same nature have been observed in widely separated
places, such as Bessarabia, Serbia and Syria. Their striking similarity
and the fact that these countries were all at one time parts of the great
Roman Empire lead one to suspect the Roman origin of these devices.
Yet, it may be maintained with equal plausibility that these methods
evolved independently, similar conditions bringing about similar results.
Even today the greater portion of humanity is counting on fingers: to
primitive man, we must remember, this is the only means of performing
the simple calculations of his daily life.
 F I N G E R P R I NTS 173

8. How old is our number language? It is impossible to indicate the

exact period in which number words originated, yet there is unmistakable
evidence that it preceded written history by many thousands of years.
One fact we have mentioned already: all traces of the original meaning
of the number words in European languages, with the possible exception
of five, are lost. And this is the more remarkable, since, as a rule, number
words possess an extraordinary stability. While time has wrought radical
changes in all other aspects we find that the number vocabulary has
been practically unaffected. In fact this stability is utilized by philologists
to trace kinships between apparently remote language groups. The reader
is invited to examine the table at the end of the chapter where the number
words of the standard Indo-European languages are compared.
Why is it then that in spite of this stability no trace of the original
meaning is found? A plausible conjecture is that while number words
have remained unchanged since the days when they originated, the names
of the concrete objects from which the number words were borrowed
have undergone a complete metamorphosis.

9. As to the structure of the number language, philological researches

disclose an almost universal uniformity. Everywhere the ten fingers of
man have left their permanent imprint.
Indeed, there is no mistaking the influence of our ten fingers on the
“selection” of the base of our number system. In all Indo-European
languages, as well as Semitic, Mongolian, and most primitive languages,
the base of numeration is ten, i.e., there are independent number words
up to ten, beyond which some compounding principle is used until 100
is reached. All these languages have independent words for 100 and
1000, and some languages for even higher decimal units. There are
apparent exceptions, such as the English eleven and twelve, or the German
elf and zwölf, but these have been traced to ein-lif and zwo-lif; lif being old
German for ten.
It is true that in addition to the decimal system, two other bases are
reasonably widespread, but their character confirms to a remarkable
degree the anthropomorphic nature of our counting scheme. These two
other systems are the quinary, base 5, and the vigesimal, base 20.
In the quinary system there are independent number words up to five,
and the compounding begins thereafter. (See table on pages 176 and 177.)
It evidently originated among people who had the habit of counting on
one hand. But why should man confine himself to one hand? A plausible
explanation is that primitive man rarely goes about unarmed. If he wants
174 Tobias Dantzig

to count, he tucks his weapon under his arm, the left arm as a rule, and
counts on his left hand, using his right hand as check-off. This may
explain why the left hand is almost universally used by right-handed
people for counting.
Many languages still bear the traces of a quinary system, and it is
reasonable to believe that some decimal systems passed through the
quinary stage. Some philologists claim that even the Indo-European
number languages are of a quinary origin. They point to the Greek
word pempazein, to count by fives, and also to the unquestionably quinary
character of the Roman numerals. However, there is no other evidence
of this sort, and it is much more probable that our group of languages
passed through a preliminary vigesimal stage.
This latter probably originated among the primitive tribes who counted
on their toes as well as on their fingers. A most striking example of such
a system is that used by the Maya Indians of Central America. Of the
same general character was the system of the ancient Aztecs. The day of
the Aztecs was divided into 20 hours; a division of the army contained
8000 soldiers (8000 = 20 × 20 × 20).
While pure vigesimal systems are rare, there are numerous languages
where the decimal and the vigesimal systems have merged. We have the
English score, twoscore, and threescore; the French vingt (20) and quatre-
vingt (4 × 20). The old French used this form still more frequently; a
hospital in Paris originally built for 300 blind veterans bears the quaint
name of Quinze-Vingt (Fifteenscore); the name Onze-Vingt (Elevenscore) was
given to a corps of police sergeants comprising 220 men.

10. There exists among the most primitive tribes of Australia and
Africa a system of numeration which has neither 5, 10, nor 20 for base.
It is a binary system, i.e., of base two. These savages have not yet reached
finger counting. They have independent numbers for one and two,
and composite numbers up to six. Beyond six everything is denoted by
“heap.”
Curr, whom we have already quoted in connection with the Australian
tribes, claims that most of these count by pairs. So strong, indeed, is this
habit of the native that he will rarely notice that two pins have been
removed from a row of seven; he will, however, become immediately
aware if one pin is missing. His sense of parity is stronger than his number
sense.
Curiously enough, this most primitive of bases had an eminent advocate
in relatively recent times in no less a person than Leibnitz. A binary
 F I N G E R P R I NTS 175

numeration requires but two symbols, 0 and 1, by means of which all

other numbers are expressed, as shown in the following table:

Decimal 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Binary 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000
Decimal 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Binary 1001 1010 1011 1100 1101 1110 1111 10000

The advantages of the base two are economy of symbols and tremendous
simplicity in operations. It must be remembered that every system requires
that tables of addition and multiplication be committed to memory. For
the binary system these reduce to 1 + 1 = 10 and 1 × 1 = 1; whereas for
the decimal, each table has 100 entries. Yet this advantage is more than
offset by lack of compactness: thus the decimal number 4096 = 212 would
be expressed in the binary system by 1,000,000,000,000.
It is the mystic elegance of the binary system that made Leibnitz
exclaim: Omnibus ex nihil ducendis sufficit unum. (One suffices to derive all
out of nothing.) Says Laplace:
Leibnitz saw in his binary arithmetic the image of Creation. . . . He
imagined that Unity represented God, and Zero the void; that the
Supreme Being drew all beings from the void, just as unity and zero
express all numbers in his system of numeration. This conception was
so pleasing to Leibnitz that he communicated it to the Jesuit, Grimaldi,
president of the Chinese tribunal for mathematics, in the hope that
this emblem of creation would convert the Emperor of China, who
was very fond of the sciences. I mention this merely to show how the
prejudices of childhood may cloud the vision even of the greatest men!

11. It is interesting to speculate what turn the history of culture

would have taken if instead of flexible fingers man had had just two
“inarticulate” stumps. If any system of numeration could at all have
developed under such circumstances, it would have probably been of
the binary type.
That mankind adopted the decimal system is a physiological accident. Those
who see the hand of Providence in everything will have to admit that
Providence is a poor mathematician. For outside its physiological merit
the decimal base has little to commend itself. Almost any other base, with
the possible exception of nine, would have done as well and probably
better.
Indeed, if the choice of a base were left to a group of experts, we
should probably witness a conflict between the practical man, who would
176 Tobias Dantzig

insist on a base with the greatest number of divisors, such as twelve, and the
mathematician, who would want a prime number, such as seven or eleven, for
a base. As a matter of fact, late in the eighteenth century the great naturalist
Buffon proposed that the duodecimal system (base 12) be universally adopted.
He pointed to the fact that 12 has 4 divisors, while 10 has only 2, and
maintained that throughout the ages this inadequacy of our decimal system
had been so keenly felt that, in spite of 10 being the universal base, most
measures had 12 secondary units.
On the other hand the great mathematician Lagrange claimed that a
prime base is far more advantageous. He pointed to the fact that with a
prime base every systematic fraction would be irreducible and would
therefore represent the number in a unique way. In our present
numeration, for instance, the decimal fraction .36 stands really for many
fractions: 36 100, 18 50, and 9 25. . . . Such an ambiguity would be
considerably lessened if a prime base, such as eleven, were adopted.
But whether the enlightened group to whom we would entrust the
selection of the base decided on a prime or a composite base, we may rest
assured that the number ten would not even be considered, for it is
neither prime nor has it a sufficient number of divisors.
In our own age, when calculating devices have largely supplanted
mental arithmetic, nobody would take either proposal seriously. The
advantages gained are so slight, and the tradition of counting by tens so
firm, that the challenge seems ridiculous.
From the standpoint of the history of culture a change of base, even if
practicable, would be highly undesirable. As long as man counts by
tens, his ten fingers will remind him of the human origin of this most
important phase of his mental life. So may the decimal system stand as a
living monument to the proposition: Man is the measure of all things.
Number Words of Some Indo-European Languages Showing
the Extraordinary Stability of Number Words
Ancient
Sanskrit Greek Latin German English French Russian
1 eka en unus eins one un odyn
2 dva duo duo zwei two deux dva
3 tri tri tres drei three trois tri
4 catur tetra quatuor vier four quatre chetyre
5 panca pente quinque fünf five cinq piat
6 sas hex sex sechs six six shest
7 sapta hepta septem sieben seven sept sem
8 asta octo octo acht eight huit vosem
9 nava ennea novem neun nine neuf deviat
10 daca deca decem zehn ten dix desiat
100 cata ecaton centum hundert hundred cent sto
1000 sehastre xilia mille tausend thousand mille tysiaca
 F I N G E R P R I NTS 177

A Typical Quinary System: The Api Language of the New Hebrides

Word Meaning
1 tai
2 lua
3 tolu
4 vari
5 luna hand
6 otai other one
7 olua “ two
8 otolu “ three
9 ovair “ four
10 lua luna two hands
A Typical Vigesimal System: The Maya Language of Central America

1 hun 1
20 kal 20
202 bak 400
203 pic 8000
204 calab 160,000
205 kinchel 3,200,000
206 alce 64,000,000

A Typical Binary System: A Western Tribe of Torres Straits

1 urapun
2 okosa
3 okosa-urapun
4 okosa-okosa
5 okosa-okosa-urapun
6 okosa-okosa-okosa
 The Empty Column

1.
s I am writing these lines there rings in my ears the old
refrain:
Reading, ’Riting, ’Rithmetic,
Taught to the tune of a hickory-stick!

In this chapter I propose to tell the story of one of three R’s, the one,
which, though oldest, came hardest to mankind.
It is not a story of brilliant achievement, heroic deeds, or noble sacrifice.
It is a story of blind stumbling and chance discovery, of groping in the dark
and refusing to admit the light. It is a story replete with obscurantism and
prejudice, of sound judgment often eclipsed by loyalty to tradition, and of
reason long held subservient to custom. In short, it is a human story.

2. Written numeration is probably as old as private property. There is

little doubt that it originated in man’s desire to keep a record of his
flocks and other goods. Notches on a stick or tree, scratches on stones
and rocks, marks in clay—these are the earliest forms of this endeavor to
record numbers by written symbols. Archaeological researches trace such
records to times immemorial, as they are found in the caves of prehistoric
man in Europe, Africa and Asia. Numeration is at least as old as written
language, and there is evidence that it preceded it. Perhaps, even, the
recording of numbers had suggested the recording of sounds.
The oldest records indicating the systematic use of written numerals
are those of the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians. They are all traced
back to about the same epoch, around 3500 B.C. When we examine
them we are struck with the great similarity in the principles used. There
is, of course, the possibility that there was communication between these
peoples in spite of the distances that separated them. However, it is

178
 TH E E M PTY CO LU M N 179

more likely that they developed their numerations along the lines of
least resistance, i.e., that their numerations were but an outgrowth of the
natural process of tallying. (See figure, page 180.)
Indeed, whether it be the cuneiform numerals of the ancient
Babylonians, the hieroglyphics of the Egyptian papyri, or the queer
figures of the early Chinese records, we find everywhere a distinctly
cardinal principle. Each numeral up to nine is merely a collection of
strokes. The same principle is used beyond nine, units of a higher class,
such as tens, hundreds, etc., being represented by special symbols.

3. The English tally stick, of obscure but probably very ancient origin,
also bears this unquestionably cardinal character. A schematic picture of
the tally is shown in the accompanying figure. The small notches each
represent a pound sterling, the larger ones 10 pounds, 100 pounds, etc.
It is curious that the English tally persisted for many centuries after
the introduction of modern numeration made its use ridiculously
obsolete. In fact it was responsible for an important episode in the history
of Parliament. Charles Dickens described this episode with inimitable
sarcasm in an address on administrative reform, which he delivered a
few years after the incident occurred.
Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was
introduced into the Court of Exchequer and the accounts were kept much
as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. A multitude of
accountants, bookkeepers, and actuaries were born and died. . . . Still
official routine inclined to those notched sticks as if they were pillars of the
Constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on
certain splints of elm-wood called tallies. In the reign of George III an
inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit whether, pens, ink and
paper, slates and pencils being in existence, this obstinate adherence to
an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought
not be effected. All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare
mention of this bold and original conception, and it took until 1826 to
get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a
considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what
was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood?
The sticks were housed in Westminster, and it would naturally occur to
any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to
be carried away for firewood by the miserable people who lived in that
neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine
required that they should never be, and so the order went out that
they were to be privately and confidentially burned. It came to pass that
180 Tobias Dantzig
 TH E E M PTY CO LU M N 181

they were burned in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, over-
gorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the
panelling set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were
reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; and we are
now in the second million of the cost thereof.

4. As opposed to this purely cardinal character of the earliest records

there is the ordinal numeration, in which the numbers are represented
by the letters of an alphabet in their spoken succession.
The earliest evidence of this principle is that of the Phoenician
numeration. It probably arose from the urge for compactness brought
about by the complexities of a growing commerce. The Phoenician origin
of both the Hebrew and the Greek numeration is unquestionable: the
Phoenician system was adopted bodily, together with the alphabet, and
even the sounds of the letters were retained.
On the other hand, the Roman numeration, which has survived to
this day, shows a marked return to the earlier cardinal methods. Yet
Greek influence is shown in the literal symbols adopted for certain units,
such as X for ten, C for hundred, M for thousand. But the substitution
of letters for the more picturesque symbols of the Chaldeans or the
Egyptians does not constitute a departure from principle.

5. The evolution of the numerations of antiquity found its final

expression in the ordinal system of the Greeks and the cardinal system
of Rome. Which of the two was superior? The question would have
significance if the only object of a numeration were a compact recording
of quantity. But this is not the main issue. A far more important question
is: how well is the system adapted to arithmetical operations, and what
ease does it lend to calculations?
In this respect there is hardly any choice between the two methods:
neither was capable of creating an arithmetic which could be used by a
man of average intelligence. This is why, from the beginning of history
until the advent of our modern positional numeration, so little progress
was made in the art of reckoning.
Not that there were no attempts to devise rules for operating on these
numerals. How difficult these rules were can be gleaned from the great
awe in which all reckoning was held in these days. A man skilled in the art
was regarded as endowed with almost supernatural powers. This may
explain why arithmetic from time immemorial was so assiduously
cultivated by the priesthood. . . . Not only was this [relation of early mathe-
matics to religious rites and mysteries] true of the ancient Orient, where
182 Tobias Dantzig

science was built around religion, but even the enlightened Greeks never
completely freed themselves from this mysticism of number and form.
And to a certain extent this awe persists to this day. The average man
identifies mathematical ability with quickness in figures. “So you are a
mathematician? Why, then you have no trouble with your income-tax
return!” What mathematician has not at least once in his career been so
addressed? There is, perhaps, unconscious irony in these words, for are
not most professional mathematicians spared all trouble incident to
excessive income?

6. There is a story of a German merchant of the fifteenth century,

which I have not succeeded in authenticating, but it is so characteristic
of the situation then existing that I cannot resist the temptation of telling
it. It appears that the merchant had a son to whom he desired to give an
advanced commercial education. He appealed to a prominent professor
of a university for advice as to where he should send his son. The reply
was that if the mathematical curriculum of the young man was to be
confined to adding and subtracting, he perhaps could obtain the
instruction in a German university; but the art of multiplying and
dividing, he continued, had been greatly developed in Italy, which in
his opinion was the only country where such advanced instruction could
be obtained.
As a matter of fact, multiplication and division as practiced in those
days had little in common with the modern operations bearing the same
names. Multiplication, for instance, was a succession of duplations, which
was the name given to the doubling of a number. In the same way division
was reduced to mediation, i.e., “halving” a number. A clearer insight into
the status of reckoning in the Middle Ages can be obtained from an
example. Using modern notations:
Today Thirteenth century
46 46 × 2 = 92
13 46 × 4 = 92 × 2 = 184
—–—
138 46 × 8 = 184 × 2 = 368
46 368 + 184 + 46= 598
—–—
598
We begin to understand why humanity so obstinately clung to such
devices as the abacus or even the tally. Computations which a child can
now perform required then the services of a specialist, and what is now
 TH E E M PTY CO LU M N 183

only a matter of a few minutes meant in the twelfth century days of

elaborate work.
The greatly increased facility with which the average man today
manipulates number has been often taken as proof of the growth of the
human intellect. The truth of the matter is that the difficulties then
experienced were inherent in the numeration in use, a numeration not
susceptible to simple, clear-cut rules. The discovery of the modern
positional numeration did away with these obstacles and made arithmetic
accessible even to the dullest mind.

7. The growing complexities of life, industry and commerce, of landed

property and slave-holding, of taxation and military organization—all
called for calculations more or less intricate, but beyond the scope of the
finger technique. The rigid, unwieldy numeration was incapable of
meeting the demand. How did man, in the five thousand years of his
civilized existence which preceded modern numeration, counter these
difficulties?
The answer is that from the very outset he had to resort to mechanical
devices which vary in form with place and age but are all the same in
principle. The scheme can be typified by the curious method of counting
an army which has been found in Madagascar. The soldiers are made to
file through a narrow passage, and one pebble is dropped for each. When
10 pebbles are counted, a pebble is cast into another pile representing
tens, and the counting continues. When 10 pebbles are amassed in the
second pile, a pebble is cast into a third pile representing hundreds, and
so on until all the soldiers have been accounted for.
From this there is but one step to the counting board or abacus which in
one form or another has been found in practically every country where
a counting technique exists. The abacus in its general form consists of a
flat board divided into a series of parallel columns, each column
representing a distinct decimal class, such as units, tens, hundreds, etc.
The board is provided with a set of counters which are used to indicate
the number of units in each class. For instance, to represent 574 on the
abacus, 4 counters are put on the last column, 7 counters on the next to the
last and 5 on the third to the last column. (See figure on page 184.)
The many counting boards known differ merely in the construction
of the columns and in the type of counters used. The Greek and Roman
types had loose counters, while the Chinese Suan-Pan of today has perfo-
rated balls sliding on slender bamboo rods. The Russian Szczety, like
the Chinese variety, consists of a wooden frame on which is mounted a
184 Tobias Dantzig

A Schematic Drawing of a Counting Board

series of wire rods with sliding buttons for counters. Finally, it is more
than probable that the ancient Hindu dust board was also an abacus in
principle, the part of the counters here being played by erasable marks
written on sand.
The origin of the word abacus is not certain. Some trace it to the
Semitic abac, dust; others believe that it came from the Greek abax, slab.
The instrument was widely used in Greece, and we find references to it
in Herodotus and Polybius. The latter, commenting on the court of
Philip II of Macedonia in his Historia, makes this suggestive statement:
Like counters on the abacus which at the pleasure of the calculator
may at one moment be worth a talent and the next moment a chalcus,
so are the courtiers at their King’s nod at one moment at the height of
prosperity and at the next objects of human pity.

To this day the counting board is in daily use in the rural districts of
Russia and throughout China, where it persists in open competition
with modern calculating devices. But in Western Europe and America
the abacus survived as a mere curiosity which few people have seen except
in pictures. Few realize how extensively the abacus was used in their own
countries only a few hundred years ago, where after a fashion it man-
 TH E E M PTY CO LU M N 185

aged to meet the difficulties which were beyond the power of a clumsy
numeration.

8. One who reflects upon the history of reckoning up to the invention

of the principle of position is struck by the paucity of achievement. This
long period of nearly five thousand years saw the fall and rise of many a
civilization, each leaving behind it a heritage of literature, art, philosophy
and religion. But what was the net achievement in the field of reckoning,
the earliest art practiced by man? An inflexible numeration so crude as
to make progress well-nigh impossible, and a calculating device so limited
in scope that even elementary calculations called for the services of an
expert. And what is more, man used these devices for thousands of
years without making a single worthwhile improvement in the
instrument, without contributing a single important idea to the system!
This criticism may sound severe; after all it is not fair to judge the
achievements of a remote age by the standards of our own time of
accelerated progress and feverish activity. Yet, even when compared with
the slow growth of ideas during the Dark Ages, the history of reckoning
presents a peculiar picture of desolate stagnation.
When viewed in this light, the achievement of the unknown Hindu
who sometime in the first centuries of our era discovered the principle
of position assumes the proportions of a world event. Not only did this
principle constitute a radical departure in method, but we know now
that without it no progress in arithmetic was possible. And yet the
principle is so simple that today the dullest schoolboy has no difficulty
in grasping it. In a measure, it is suggested by the very structure of our
number language. Indeed, it would appear that the first attempt to
translate the action of the counting board into the language of numerals
ought to have resulted in the discovery of the principle of position.
Particularly puzzling to us is the fact that the great mathematicians of
classical Greece did not stumble on it. Is it that the Greeks had such a
marked contempt for applied science, leaving even the instruction of
their children to the slaves? But if so, how is it that the nation which
gave us geometry and carried this science so far did not create even a
rudimentary algebra? Is it not equally strange that algebra, that
cornerstone of modern mathematics, also originated in India and at about
the same time when positional numeration did?

9. A close examination of the anatomy of our modern numeration may

shed light on these questions. The principle of position consists in giving
186 Tobias Dantzig

the numeral a value which depends not only on the member of the
natural sequence it represents, but also on the position it occupies with
respect to the other symbols of the group. Thus, the same digit 2 has
different meanings in the three numbers 342, 725, 269: in the first case
it stands for two; in the second for twenty; in the third for two hundred.
As a matter of fact 342 is just an abbreviation for three hundred plus
four tens plus two units.
But that is precisely the scheme of the counting board, where 342 is
represented by

And, as I said before, it would seem that it is sufficient to translate this

scheme into the language of numerals to obtain substantially what we
have today.
True! But there is one difficulty. Any attempt to make a permanent
record of a counting-board operation would meet the obstacle that such
an entry as ⬅ = may represent any one of several numbers: 32, 302, 320,
3,002, and 3,020 among others. In order to avoid this ambiguity it is
essential to have some method of representing the gaps, i.e., what is
needed is a symbol for an empty column.
We see therefore that no progress was possible until a symbol was
invented for an empty class, a symbol for nothing, our modern zero. The
concrete mind of the ancient Greeks could not conceive the void as a
number, let alone endow the void with a symbol.
And neither did the unknown Hindu see in zero the symbol of nothing.
The Indian term for zero was sunya, which meant “empty” or “blank,” but
had no connotation of “void” or “nothing.” And so, from all appearances,
the discovery of zero was an accident brought about by an attempt to make
an unambiguous permanent record of a counting-board operation.

10. How the Indian sunya became the zero of today constitutes one of
the most interesting chapters in the history of culture. When the Arabs
of the tenth century adopted the Indian numeration, they translated the
Indian sunya by their own, sifr, which meant “empty” in Arabic. When
the Indo-Arabic numeration was first introduced into Italy, sifr was
latinized into zephirum. This happened at the beginning of the thirteenth
century, and in the course of the next hundred years the word underwent
a series of changes which culminated in the Italian zero.
About the same time Jordanus Nemerarius was introducing the Arabic
 TH E E M PTY CO LU M N 187

system into Germany. He kept the Arabic word, changing it slightly to

cifra. That for some time in the learned circles of Europe the word cifra
and its derivatives denoted zero is shown by the fact that the great Gauss,
the last of the mathematicians of the nineteenth century who wrote in
Latin, still used cifra in this sense. In the English language the word
cifra has become cipher and has retained its original meaning of zero.
The attitude of the common people toward this new numeration is
reflected in the fact that soon after its introduction into Europe, the
word cifra was used as a secret sign; but this connotation was altogether
lost in the succeeding centuries. The verb decipher remains as a monument
of these early days.
The next stage in this development saw the new art of reckoning
spread more widely. It is significant that the essential part played by zero
in this new system did not escape the notice of the masses. Indeed, they
identified the whole system with its most striking feature, the cifra, and
this explains how this word in its different forms, ziffer, chiffre, etc., came
to receive the meaning of numeral, which it has in Europe today.
This double meaning, the popular cifra standing for numeral and the
cifra of the learned signifying zero, caused considerable confusion. In
vain did scholars attempt to revive the original meaning of the word:
the popular meaning had taken deep root. The learned had to yield to
popular usage, and the matter was eventually settled by adopting the
Italian zero in the sense in which it is used today.
The same interest attaches to the word algorithm. As the term is used
today, it applies to any mathematical procedure consisting of an indefinite
number of steps, each step applying to the result of the one preceding it.
But between the tenth and fifteenth centuries algorithm was synonymous
with positional numeration. We now know that the word is merely a
corruption of Al Kworesmi, the name of the Arabian mathematician of
the ninth century whose book (in Latin translation) was the first work
on this subject to reach Western Europe.

11. Today, when positional numeration has become a part of our daily
life, it seems that the superiority of this method, the compactness of its
notation, the ease and elegance it introduced in calculations, should have
assured the rapid and sweeping acceptance of it. In reality, the transition,
far from being immediate, extended over long centuries. The struggle
between the Abacists, who defended the old traditions, and the Algorists,
who advocated the reform, lasted from the eleventh to the fifteenth
century and went through all the usual stages of obscurantism and reac-
188 Tobias Dantzig

tion. In some places Arabic numerals were banned from official

documents; in others, the art was prohibited altogether. And, as usual,
prohibition did not succeed in abolishing, but merely served to spread
bootlegging, ample evidence of which is found in the thirteenth-century
archives of Italy, where, it appears, merchants were using the Arabic
numerals as a sort of secret code.
Yet, for a while reaction succeeded in arresting the progress and in
hampering the development of the new system. Indeed, little of essential
value or of lasting influence was contributed to the art of reckoning in
these transition centuries. Only the outward appearance of the numerals
went through a series of changes; not, however, from any desire for
improvement, but because the manuals of these days were handwritten.
In fact, the numerals did not assume a stable form until the introduction
of printing. It can be added parenthetically that so great was the
stabilizing influence of printing that the numerals of today have essentially
the same appearance as those of the fifteenth century.

12. As to the final victory of the Algorists, no definite date can be set.
We do know that at the beginning of the sixteenth century the supremacy
of the new numeration was incontestable. Since then progress was
unhampered, so that in the course of the next hundred years all the
rules of operations, both on integers and on common and decimal
fractions, reached practically the same scope and form in which they are
taught today in our schools.
Another century, and the Abacists and all they stood for were so
completely forgotten that various peoples of Europe began each to regard
the positional numeration as its own national achievement. So, for
instance, early in the nineteenth century we find that Arabic numerals
were called in Germany Deutsche with a view to differentiating them
from the Roman, which were recognized as of foreign origin.
As to the abacus itself, no traces of it are found in Western Europe
during the eighteenth century. Its reappearance early in the nineteenth
century occurred under very curious circumstances. The mathematician
Poncelet, a general under Napoleon, was captured in the Russian
campaign and spent many years in Russia as a prisoner of war. Upon
returning to France he brought, among other curios, a Russian abacus.
For many years to come, this importation of Poncelet’s was regarded as a
great curiosity of “barbaric” origin. Such examples of national amnesia
abound in the history of culture. How many educated people even today
know that only four hundred years ago finger counting was the average
 TH E E M PTY CO LU M N 189

man’s only means of calculating, while the counting board was accessible
only to the professional calculators of the time?

13. Conceived in all probability as the symbol for an empty column

on a counting board, the Indian sunya was destined to become the turning
point in a development without which the progress of modern science,
industry, or commerce is inconceivable. And the influence of this great
discovery was by no means confined to arithmetic. By paving the way to
a generalized number concept, it played just as fundamental a role in
practically every branch of mathematics. In the history of culture the
discovery of zero will always stand out as one of the greatest single
achievements of the human race.
A great discovery! Yes. But, like so many other early discoveries, which
have profoundly affected the life of the race—not the reward of painstaking
research, but a gift from blind chance.

The foregoing two selections consist

of Chapters I and II
from Dantzig’s NUMBER: THE LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE.
 Leonhard Euler
1707–1783

T he story of mathematics during the eighteenth century is

centered upon Leonhard Euler. He was the most prolific
mathematical author of all time. It has been estimated that sixty to
eighty large quarto volumes would be needed for his collected work.
Not all of it, however, has stood the meticulous inspection of this
century. Armed with the powerful tools invented by Descartes,
Newton, and Leibniz, mathematicians of Euler’s day were busy and
optimistic, unhampered by the wary self-criticism of modern times.
Euler was born in 1707, at Basel in Switzerland. He received the
degree of Master of Arts from the University of Basel at the age of
seventeen. Three years later he was invited to join the Academy at
St. Petersburg (Leningrad).
In those days mathematicians were frequently connected with a
royal court. Euler held such posts successively under Catherine I of
Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and Catherine the Great of
Russia. Royal patronage was not always predictable, but esteem for
learning crossed national lines. When a Russian army invaded
Germany in 1760 and pillaged a farm belonging to Euler, his losses
were immediately made good by the Russian Empress.

Notes from the artist: “A portrait of Euler against a background

comprising three of his mathematical conclusions. At the top is
his discovery of the formula expressing the relationship of e, ␲, and i,
followed by eight, and part of the ninth, of the Eulerian numbers.
Opposite his profile is a suggestion of a ‘magic’ square of the order
of ten, representing an arrangement of numerical relationships that Euler
believed could not exist. . . . He was not disproved until 1959.”

190
192 Leonhard Euler

Euler enriched mathematics in every department. He is considered

one of the founders of modern analysis. Although his energy was
as remarkable as his genius, he overtaxed himself. His last years
were spent in total blindness. Despite this handicap he continued
his labors, aided by his powerful memory. His productivity continued
until his death in 1783.

T opology (geometria situs) has been called rubber-sheet geometry.

It examines geometric properties that are unaffected when we stretch
or twist or otherwise change an object’s size and shape. Euler’s
memoir on the Königsberg bridges is one of the foundation stones
of this branch of mathematics. The Seven Bridges of Königsberg resulted
from what might be called mathematical recreation. But the small
amusement of the Königsberg townsfolk disclosed an important
scientific principle to Euler.
It is interesting to notice the importance of the symbols used in
solving this problem. The symbols themselves suggest relationships
between the bridges and the land areas that are not apparent from
inspection of the picture. N. R. Campbell has written of this aspect
of mathematical analysis.
Mathematical puzzles often lead to important discoveries, but they
need no excuse beyond intellectual delight. You may want to stop at
the end of paragraph fifteen and try to discover for yourself the
simplification mentioned by Euler.
 The Seven Bridges
of Königsberg

1.

he branch of geometry that deals with magnitudes has been

zealously studied throughout the past, but there is another branch that
has been almost unknown up to now; Leibniz spoke of it first, calling it
the “geometry of position” (geometria situs). This branch of geometry deals
with relations dependent on position alone, and investigates the properties
of position; it does not take magnitudes into consideration, nor does it
involve calculation with quantities. But as yet no satisfactory definition
has been given of the problems that belong to this geometry of position
or of the method to be used in solving them. Recently there was
announced a problem that, while it certainly seemed to belong to
geometry, was nevertheless so designed that it did not call for the
determination of a magnitude, nor could it be solved by quantitative
calculation; consequently I did not hesitate to assign it to the geometry
of position, especially since the solution required only the consideration
of position, calculation being of no use. In this paper I shall give an
account of the method that I discovered for solving this type of problem,
which may serve as an example of the geometry of position.
2. The problem, which I understand is quite well known, is stated as
follows: In the town of Königsberg in Prussia there is an island A, called
“Kneiphof,” with the two branches of the river (Pregel) flowing around
it, as shown in Fig. 1. There are seven bridges, a, b, c, d, e, f and g,
crossing the two branches. The question is whether a person can plan a
walk in such a way that he will cross each of these bridges once but not
more than once. I was told that while some denied the possibility of doing
this and others were in doubt, there were none who maintained that it
was actually possible. On the basis of the above I formulated the fol-

193
194 Leonhard Euler

lowing very general problem for myself: Given any configuration of the
river and the branches into which it may divide, as well as any number
of bridges, to determine whether or not it is possible to cross each bridge
exactly once.

Fig. 1

3. The particular problem of the seven bridges of Königsberg could

be solved by carefully tabulating all possible paths, thereby ascertaining
by inspection which of them, if any, met the requirement. This method
of solution, however, is too tedious and too difficult because of the large
number of possible combinations, and in other problems where many
more bridges are involved it could not be used at all. When the analysis
is undertaken in the manner just described it yields a great many details
that are irrelevant to the problem; undoubtedly this is the reason the
method is so onerous. Hence I discarded it and searched for another
more restricted in its scope; namely, a method which would show only
whether a journey satisfying the prescribed condition could in the first
instance be discovered; such an approach, I believed, would be much
simpler.
4. My entire method rests on the appropriate and convenient way in
which I denote the crossing of bridges, in that I use capital letters, A, B,
C, D, to designate the various land areas that are separated from one
another by the river. Thus when a person goes from area A to area B
 TH E S EVE N B R I D G E S O F KÖ N I G S B E RG 195

across bridge a or b, I denote this crossing by the letters AB, the first of
which designates the area whence he came, the second the area where
he arrives after crossing the bridge. If the traveller then crosses from B
over bridge f into D, this crossing is denoted by the letters BD; the two
crossings AB and BD performed in succession I denote simply by the
three letters ABD, since the middle letter B designates the area into
which the first crossing leads as well as the area out of which the second
crossing leads.
5. Similarly, if the traveller proceeds from D across bridge g into C, I
designate these three successive crossings by the four letters ABDC.
These four letters signify that the traveller who was originally in A
crossed over into B, then to D, and finally to C; and since these areas
are separated from one another by the river the traveller must necessarily
have crossed three bridges. The crossing of four bridges will be
represented by five letters, and if the traveller crosses an arbitrary number
of bridges his journey will be described by a number of letters that is one
greater than the number of bridges. For example, eight letters are needed
to denote the crossing of seven bridges.
6. With this method I pay no attention to which bridges are used;
that is to say, if the crossing from one area to another can be made by
way of several bridges it makes no difference which one is used, so long
as it leads to the desired area. Thus if a route could be laid out over the
seven Königsberg bridges so that each bridge were crossed once and
only once, we would be able to describe this route by using eight letters,
and in this series of letters the combination AB (or BA) would have to
occur twice, since there are two bridges a and b, connecting the regions
A and B; similarly the combination AC would occur twice, while the
combinations AD, BD, and CD would each occur once.
7. Our question is now reduced to whether from the four letters A, B,
C, and D a series of eight letters can be formed in which all the
combinations just mentioned occur the required number of times. Before
making the effort, however, of trying to find such an arrangement we do
well to consider whether its existence is even theoretically possible or
not. For if it could be shown that such an arrangement is in fact
impossible, then the effort expended on finding it would be wasted.
Therefore I have sought for a rule that would determine without difficulty
as regards this and all similar questions whether the required arrangement
of letters is feasible.
8. For the purpose of finding such a rule I take a single region A into
which an arbitrary number of bridges, a, b, c, d, etc., leads (Fig. 2).
196 Leonhard Euler

Of these bridges I first consider only a. If the traveller crosses this bridge
he must either have been in A before crossing or have reached A after
crossing, so that according to the above method of denotation the letter
A will appear exactly once. If there are three bridges, a, b, c, leading

Fig. 2

to A and the traveller crosses all three, then the letter A will occur twice
in the expression for his route, whether it begins at A or not. And if
there are five bridges leading to A the expression for a route that crosses
them all will contain the letter A three times. If the number of bridges is
odd, increase it by one, and take half the sum; the quotient represents
the number of times the letter A appears.
9. Let us now return to the Königsberg problem (Fig. 1). Since there
are five bridges, a, b, c, d, e, leading to (and from) island A, the letter A
must occur three times in the expression describing the route. The letter
B must occur twice, since three bridges lead to B; similarly D and C
must each occur twice. That is to say, the series of eight letters that
represents the crossing of the seven bridges must contain A three times
and B, C, and D each twice; but this is quite impossible with a series of
eight letters. Thus it is apparent that a crossing of the seven bridges of
Königsberg in the manner required cannot be effected.
10. Using this method we are always able, whenever the number of
bridges leading to a particular region is odd, to determine whether it is
possible, in a journey, to cross each bridge exactly once. Such a route
exists if the number of bridges plus one is equal to the sum of the numbers
that indicate how often each individual letter must occur. On the other
hand, if this sum is greater than the number of bridges plus one, as it is
in our example, then the desired route cannot be constructed. The rule
that I gave (section 8) for determining from the number of bridges that
lead to A how often the letter A will occur in the route description is
independent of whether these bridges all come from a single region B,
as in Fig. 2, or from several regions, because I am considering only the
 TH E S EVE N B R I D G E S O F KÖ N I G S B E RG 197

region A, and attempting to determine how often the letter A must occur.
11. When the number of bridges leading to A is even, we must take
into account whether the route begins in A or not. For example, if there
are two bridges that lead to A and the route starts from A, then the letter
A will occur twice, once to indicate the departure from A by one of the
bridges and a second time to indicate the return to A by the other bridge.
However, if the traveller starts his journey in another region, the letter
A will occur only once, since by my method of description the single
occurrence of A indicates an entrance into as well as a departure from A.
12. Suppose, as in our case, there are four bridges leading into the
region A, and the route is to begin at A. The letter A will then occur
three times in the expression for the whole route, while if the journey
had started in another region, A would occur only twice. With six bridges
leading to A the letter A will occur four times if A is the starting point,
otherwise only three times. In general, if the number of bridges is even,
the number of occurrences of the letter A, when the starting region is
not A, will be half the number of the bridges; one more than half, when
the route starts from A.
13. Every route must, of course, start in some one region, thus from
the number of bridges that lead to each region I determine the number
of times that the corresponding letter will occur in the expression for the
entire route as follows: When the number of the bridges is odd I increase
it by one and divide by two; when the number is even I simply divide it
by two. Then if the sum of the resulting numbers is equal to the actual
number of bridges plus one, the journey can be accomplished, though it
must start in a region approached by an odd number of bridges. But if
the sum is one less than the number of bridges plus one, the journey is
feasible if its starting point is a region approached by an even number of
bridges, for in that case the sum is again increased by one.
14. My procedure for determining whether in any given system of
rivers and bridges it is possible to cross each bridge exactly once is as
follows: 1. First I designate the individual regions separated from one
another by the water as A, B, C, etc. 2. I take the total number of bridges,
increase it by one, and write the resulting number uppermost. 3. Under
this number I write the letters A, B, C, etc., and opposite each of these
I note the number of bridges that lead to that particular region. 4. I
place an asterisk next the letters that have even numbers opposite them.
5. Opposite each even number I write the half of that number and opposite
each odd number I write half of the sum formed by that number plus
one. 6. I add up the last column of numbers. If the sum is one less
198 Leonhard Euler

than, or equal to, the number written at the top, I conclude that the
required journey can be made. But it must be noted that when the sum
is one less than the number at the top, the route must start from a region
marked with an asterisk. And in the other case, when these two numbers
are equal, it must start from a region that does not have an asterisk.
For the Königsberg problem I would set up the tabulation as follows:
Number of bridges 7, giving 8 ( = 7 + 1) bridges
A, 5 3
B, 3 2
C, 3 2
D, 3 2
The last column now adds up to more than 8, and hence the required
journey cannot be made.
15. Let us take an example of two islands, with four rivers forming the
surrounding water, as shown in Fig. 3. Fifteen bridges, marked a, b, c, d,

Fig. 3

etc., cross the water around the islands and the adjoining rivers; the
question is whether a journey can be arranged that will pass over all the
bridges, but not over any of them more than once. 1. I begin by marking
all the regions that are separated from one another by the water with the
letters A, B, C, D, E, F—there are six of them. 2. I take the number of
bridges—15—add one and write this number—16—uppermost. 3. I write
the letters A, B, C, etc., in a column and opposite each letter I write
the number of bridges connecting with that region, e.g., 8 bridges for
A, 4 for B, etc. 4. The letters that have even numbers opposite them
 TH E S EVE N B R I D G E S O F KÖ N I G S B E RG 199

I mark with an asterisk. 5. In a third column I write the half of each

corresponding even number, or, if the number is odd, I add one to it,
and put down half the sum. 6. Finally I add the numbers in the third
column and get 16 as the sum. This is the same as the number 16 that
16
A*, 8 4
B*, 4 2
C*, 4 2
D, 3 2
E, 5 3
F*, 6 3
16
appears above, and hence it follows that the journey can be effected if it
begins in regions D or E, whose symbols have no asterisk. The following
expression represents such a route:
EaFbBcFdAeFfCgAhCiDkAmEnApBoElD.
Here I have also indicated, by small letters between the capitals, which
bridges are crossed.
16. By this method we can easily determine, even in cases of
considerable complexity, whether a single crossing of each of the bridges
in sequence is actually possible. But I should now like to give another
and much simpler method, which follows quite easily from the preceding,
after a few preliminary remarks. In the first place, I note that the sum of
all the numbers of bridges to each region, that are written down in the
second column opposite the letters A, B, C, etc., is necessarily double
the actual number of bridges. The reason is that in the tabulation of the
bridges leading to the various regions each bridge is counted twice,
once for each of the two regions that it connects.
17. From this observation it follows that the sum of the numbers in
the second column must be an even number, since half of it represents
the actual number of bridges. Hence it is impossible for exactly one of
these numbers (indicating how many bridges connect with each region)
to be odd, or, for that matter, three or five, etc. In other words, if any of
the numbers opposite the letters A, B, C, etc., are odd, an even number
of them must be odd. In the Königsberg problem, for instance, all four
of the numbers opposite the letters A, B, C, D were odd, as explained in
section 14, while in the example just given (section 15) only two of the
numbers were odd, namely those opposite D and E.
200 Leonhard Euler

18. Since the sum of the numbers opposite A, B, C, etc., is double the
number of bridges, it is clear that if this sum is increased by two and
then divided by 2 the result will be the number written at the top. When
all the numbers in the second column are even, and the half of each is
written down in the third column, the total of this column will be one
less than the number at the top. In that case it will always be possible to
cross all the bridges. For in whatever region the journey begins, there
will be an even number of bridges leading to it, which is the requirement.
In the Königsberg problem we could, for instance, arrange matters so
that each bridge is crossed twice, which is equivalent to dividing each
bridge into two, whence the number of bridges leading to each region
would be even.
19. Further, when only two of the numbers opposite the letters are
odd, and the others even, the required route is possible provided it
begins in a region approached by an odd number of bridges. We take
half of each even number, and likewise half of each odd number after
adding one, as our procedure requires; the sum of these halves will then
be one greater than the number of bridges, and hence equal to the number
written at the top.
Similarly, where four, six, or eight, etc., of the numbers in the second
column are odd it is evident that the sum of the numbers in the third
column will be one, two, three, etc., greater than the top number, as the
case may be, and hence the desired journey is impossible.
20. Thus for any configuration that may arise the easiest way of
determining whether a single crossing of all the bridges is possible is to
apply the following rules:
If there are more than two regions which are approached by an odd
number of bridges, no route satisfying the required conditions can be
found.
If, however, there are only two regions with an odd number of
approach bridges, the required journey can be completed provided it
originates in one of the regions.
If, finally, there is no region with an odd number of approach
bridges, the required journey can be effected, no matter where it begins.
These rules solve completely the problem initially proposed.
21. After we have determined that a route actually exists we are left
with the question how to find it. To this end the following rule will serve:
Wherever possible we mentally eliminate any two bridges that connect
the same two regions; this usually reduces the number of bridges
considerably. Then—and this should not be difficult—we proceed to trace the
 TH E S EVE N B R I D G E S O F KÖ N I G S B E RG 201

required route across the remaining bridges. The pattern of this route,
once we have found it, will not be substantially affected by the restoration
of the bridges which were first eliminated from consideration—as a little
thought will show; therefore I do not think I need say more about finding
the routes themselves.
 Norman Robert Campbell
1880–1949

N orman Robert Campbell was a British physicist and

philosopher of science. Born in 1880, he was educated at Eton and
at Trinity College, Cambridge. While his researches in physics were
highly regarded by his fellow-specialists, he is best known to the
general public for his skill in popularizing science. For many years
he gave freely of his time to adult education groups. Always clear
and original, he had the ability to provoke thoughtful consideration
of basic ideas. When he died in 1949 he had published nine books
and some eighty-nine research papers.

T he selections below are taken from Campbell’s book, What is

Science?, published in 1921. It is part of the effort that has been made
in this century to define our mathematical concepts. Further
investigations into the idea of number will be found in this volume,
in selections from Tobias Dantzig, Bertrand Russell, and the joint
work of Edward Kasner and James R. Newman.
For the scientist who undertakes to explain his field to the layman,
it is not enough to know the subject thoroughly—he must also be
able to imagine what it is like not to know the subject. This is
especially difficult when what is being examined is the origin of an
idea so familiar that its absence is almost unthinkable. In Measurement,
Campbell surmounts this difficulty by erasing the idea. He provides
a clean slate in the form of a pre-numeral measuring system. Then
our present-day use of numerals for the process of measuring is
shown as a fairly recent invention of the human mind.
The distinction that Campbell makes between “numeral” and
“number” is very important. The first is a symbol for the second,
202
 N. R. Campbell 203

which is a property. Numerals can be added, subtracted, and

manipulated in other ways without regard to what properties these
numerals represent. As the numerals themselves fall into patterns,
it is often valuable to ask whether or not a new pattern is a picture
of something that exists in the material world. It is the discovery of
these new pictures that makes measurement of such importance to
science.
The use of numerals in measurement leads, in the second article,
to an examination of numerical laws and the further uses of
mathematics in science. And here we see the mathematician as artist.
His sense of form, neatness, and beauty tells him when an
arrangement of symbols looks good. Feeling that such an attractive
array of scrawls should have some counterpart in the physical world,
he often finds that they do, and a new scientific law is discovered.
Henri Poincaré has written on this aesthetic sense which all great
mathematicians have, but has confessed that he could not explain it.
In his repeated wonder that the world conforms to such a great
extent to our ideas, Campbell sees logic as something that is inborn
in the human mind. Ideas arrived at by intellectual activity may be
logically true, but they must be tested by experiment before they
can be accepted as descriptions of the way the world actually works.
Campbell is not writing for the mathematician here. He is
conscientiously nontechnical. He does more than describe some
applications of mathematics to science: he leads you into thinking
about thinking.
 Measurement

very one knows that measurement is a very important part of

many sciences; they know too, that many sciences are “mathematical”
and can only be apprehended completely by those versed in mathematics.
But very few people could explain exactly how measurement enters into
science, why it enters into some and not in others, why it is so important,
what mathematics is and why it is so intimately connected with
measurement and with the sciences in which measurement is involved.
. . . I propose to attempt some answer to these questions. Any answer to
these questions that can be attempted here will not, of course, enable
anyone to start immediately the study of one of the mathematical sciences
in the hope of understanding it completely. But if he can be convinced
that even in the most abstruse parts of those sciences there is something
that he can comprehend and appreciate without the smallest knowledge
of mathematics, something may be done towards extending the range of
the sciences that are open to the layman.
What Is Measurement? Measurement is one of the notions which modern
science has taken over from common sense. Measurement does not appear
as part of common sense until a comparatively high stage of civilization
is reached; and even the common-sense conception has changed and
developed enormously in historic times. When I say that measurement
belongs to common sense, I only mean that it is something with which
every civilized person to-day is entirely familiar. It may be defined, in
general, as the assignment of numbers to represent properties. If we say
that the time is 3 o’clock, that the price of coal is 56 shillings a ton, and
that we have just bought 2 tons of it—in all such cases we are using
numbers to convey important information about the “properties” of the
day, of coal in general, of the coal in our cellar, or so on; and our
statement depends somehow upon measurement.
The first point I want to notice is that it is only some properties and
not all that can be thus represented by numbers. If I am buying a sack of

204
 M EAS U RE M E NT 205

potatoes I may ask what it weighs and what it costs; to those questions I
shall expect a number in answer; it weighs 56 lbs. and costs 5 shillings.
But I may also ask of what variety the potatoes are, and whether they are
good cookers; to those questions I shall not expect a number in answer.
The dealer may possibly call the variety “No. 11” in somebody’s catalogue;
but even if he does, I shall feel that such use of a number is not real
measurement, and is not of the same kind as the use in connection with
weight or cost. What is the difference? Why are some properties
measurable and others not? Those are the questions I want to discuss.
And I will outline the answer immediately in order that the reader may
see at what the subsequent discussion is aiming. The difference is this.
Suppose I have two sacks of potatoes which are identical in weight, cost,
variety, and cooking qualities; and that I pour the two sacks into one so
that there is now only one sack of potatoes. This sack will differ from
the two original sacks in weight and cost (the measurable properties),
but will not differ from them in variety and cooking qualities (the
properties that are not measurable). The measurable properties of a body
are those which are changed by the combination of similar bodies; the
non-measurable properties are those that are not changed. We shall see
that this definition is rather too crude, but it will serve for the present.
Numbers. In order to see why this difference is so important we must
inquire more closely into the meaning of “number.” And at the outset
we must note that confusion is apt to arise because that word is used to
denote two perfectly different things. It sometimes means a mere name
or word or symbol, and it sometimes means a property of an object.
Thus, besides the properties which have been mentioned, the sack of
potatoes has another definite property, namely the number of potatoes in
it, and the number is as much a property of the object which we call a
sack of potatoes as its weight or its cost. This property can be (and must
be) “represented by a number” just as the weight can be; for instance, it
might be represented by 200. But this “200” is not itself a property of the
sack; it is a mere mark on the paper for which would be substituted, if I
was speaking instead of writing, a spoken sound; it is a name or symbol
for the property. When we say that measurement is the representation of
properties by “numbers,” we mean that it is the representation of
properties, other than number, by the symbols which are always used to
represent number. Moreover, there is a separate word for these symbols;
they are called “numerals.” We shall always use that word in future and
confine “number” to the meaning of the property which is always
represented by numerals.
206 N. R. Campbell

These considerations are not mere quibbling over words; they bring
out clearly an important point, namely, that the measurable properties of
an object must resemble in some special way the property number, since
they can be fitly represented by the same symbols; they must have some
quality common with number. We must proceed to ask what this common
quality is, and the best way to begin is to examine the property number
rather more closely.
The number of a sack of potatoes, or, as it is more usually expressed,
the number of potatoes contained in it, is ascertained by the process of
counting. Counting is inseparably connected in our minds to-day with
numerals, but the process can be, and at an earlier stage of civilization
was, carried on without them. Without any use of numerals I can
determine whether the number of one sack of potatoes is equal to that of
another. For this purpose I take a potato from one sack, mark it in some
way to distinguish it from the rest (e.g. by putting it into a box), and
then perform a similar operation on a potato from the other sack. I then
repeat this double operation continually until I have exhausted the
potatoes from one sack. If the operation which exhausts the potatoes
from one sack exhausts also the potatoes from the other, then I know
that the sacks had the same number of potatoes; if not, then the sack
which is not exhausted had a larger number of potatoes than the other.
The Rules for Counting. This process could be applied equally well if
the objects counted against each other were not of the same nature. The
potatoes in a sack can be counted, not only against another collection of
potatoes, but also against the men in a regiment or against the days in
the year. The “mark,” which is used for distinguishing the objects in the
process of counting, may have to be altered to suit the objects counted,
but some other suitable mark could be found which would enable the
process to be carried out. If, having never heard of counting before, we
applied the process to all kinds of different objects, we should soon
discover certain rules which would enable us to abbreviate and simplify
the process considerably. These rules appear to us to-day so obvious as
to be hardly worth stating, but as they are undoubtedly employed in
modern methods of counting, we must notice them here. The first is
that if two sets of objects, when counted against a third set, are found to
have the same number as that third set, then, when counted against each
other they will be found to have the same number. This rule enables us to
determine whether two sets of objects have the same number without
bringing them together; if I want to find out whether the number of potatoes
in the sack I propose to buy is the same as that in a sack I have at home, I
 M EAS U RE M E NT 207

need not bring my sack to the shop; I can count the potatoes at the shop
against some third collection, take this collection home, and count it
against my potatoes. Accordingly the discovery of this first rule
immediately suggests the use of portable collections which can be
counted, first against one collection and then against another, in order
to ascertain whether these two have the same number.
The value of this suggestion is increased greatly by the discovery of a
second rule. It is that by starting with a single object and continually
adding to it another single object, we can build up a series of collections
of which one will have the same number as any other collection
whatsoever. This rule helps us in two ways. First, since it states that it is
possible to make a standard series of collections one of which will have
the same number as any other collection, it suggests that it might be
well to count collections, not against each other, but against a standard
series of collections. If we could carry this standard series about with us,
we could always ascertain whether any one collection had the same
number as any other by observing whether the member of the standard
series which had the same number as the first had also the same number
as the second. Next, it shows us how to make such a standard series
with the least possible cumbrousness. If we had to have a totally different
collection for each member of the standard series, the whole series would
be impossibly cumbrous; but our rule shows that the earlier members of
the series (that is those with the smaller number) may be all parts of the
later members. Suppose we have a collection of objects, each
distinguishable from each other, and agree to take one of these objects as
the first member of the series; this object together with some other as the
next member; these objects with yet another as the next member; and so
on. Then we shall obtain, according to our rule, a series, some member
of which has the same number as any other collection we want to count,
and yet the number of objects, in all the members of the standard series
taken together, will not be greater than that of the largest collection we
want to count.
And, of course, this is the process actually adopted. For the successive
members of the standard series compounded in this way, primitive man
chose, as portable, distinguishable objects, his fingers and toes. Civilized
man invented numerals for the same purpose. Numerals are simply
distinguishable objects out of which we build our standard series of
collections by adding them in turn to previous members of the series. The
first member of our standard series is 1, the next 1, 2, the next 1, 2, 3 and
so on. We count other collections against these members of the standard
208 N. R. Campbell

series and so ascertain whether or no two collections so counted have

the same number. By an ingenious convention we describe which member
of the series has the same number as a collection counted against it by
quoting simply the last numeral in that member; we describe the fact
that the collection of the days of the week has the same number as the
collection 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, by saying “that the number” of the days of
the week is 7. But when we say that what we really mean, and what is
really important, is that this collection has the same number as the
collection of numerals (taken in the standard order) which ends in 7
and the same number as any other collection which also has the same
number as the collection of numerals which ends in 7.1
The two rules that have been mentioned are necessary to explain
what we mean by “the number” of a collection and how we ascertain
that number. There is a third rule which is of great importance in the
use of numbers. We often want to know what is the number of a collection
which is formed by combining two other collections of which the numbers
are known, or, as it is usually called, adding the two collections. For
instance we may ask what is the number of the collection made by adding
a collection of 2 objects to a collection of 3 objects. We all know the
answer, 5. It can be found by arguing thus: The first collection can be
counted against the numerals 1, 2; the second against the numerals 1, 2,
3. But the numerals 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, a collection formed by adding the two
first collections, can be counted against 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Therefore the
number of the combined collection is 5. However, a little examination
will show that in reaching this conclusion we have made use of another
rule, namely that if two collections A and a, have the same number, and
two other collections B and b, have the same number, then the collection
formed by adding A to B has the same number as that formed by adding
a to b; in other words, equals added to equals produce equal sums. This
is a third rule about numbers and counting; it is quite as important as the
other two rules; all three are so obvious to us to-day that we never think
about them, but they must have been definitely discovered at some time

1. Numerals have also an immense advantage over fingers and toes as objects of which the
standard series may be formed, in that the series can be extended indefinitely by a
simple rule which automatically gives names to any new numerals that may be required.
Even if we have never hitherto had reason to carry the series beyond (say) 131679 in
order to count all the collections we have met with, when we do meet at last with a
larger collection, we know at once that the objects we must add to our standard series
are 131680, 131681, and so on. This is a triumph of conventional nomenclature,
much more satisfactory than the old convention that when we have exhausted our
fingers we must begin on our toes, but it is not essentially different.
 M EAS U RE M E NT 209

in the history of mankind, and without them all, our habitual use of
numbers would be impossible.
What Properties Are Measurable? And now, after this discussion of
number, we can return to the other measurable properties of objects which,
like number, can be represented by numerals. We can now say more
definitely what is the characteristic of these properties which makes them
measurable. It is that there are rules true of these properties, closely
analogous to the rules on which the use of number depends. If a property
is to be measurable it must be such that (1) two objects which are the
same in respect of that property as some third object are the same as each
other; (2) by adding objects successively we must be able to make a
standard series one member of which will be the same in respect of the
property as any other object we want to measure; (3) equals added to
equals produce equal sums. In order to make a property measurable we
must find some method of judging equality and of adding objects, such
that these rules are true.
Let me explain what is meant by using as an example the measurable
property, weight.
Weight is measured by the balance. Two bodies are judged to have
the same weight if, when they are placed in opposite pans, neither tends
to sink; and two bodies are added in respect of weight when they are
both placed on the same pan of the balance. With these definitions of
equality and addition, it is found that the three rules are obeyed. (1) If
the body A balances the body B, and B balances C, then A balances C.
(2) By placing a body in one pan and continually adding it to others,
collections can be built up which will balance any other body placed in
the other pan. (3) If the body A balances the body B, and C balances D,
then A and C in the same pan will balance B and D in the other pan. To
make the matter yet clearer let us take another measurable property, length.
Two straight rods are judged equal in length, if they can be placed so
that both ends of one are contiguous to both ends of the other; they are
added in respect of length, when they are placed with one end of one
contiguous with one end of the other, while the two form a single straight
rod. Here again we find the three rules fulfilled. Bodies which are equal
in length to the same body are equal in length to each other. By adding
successively rods to each other, a rod can be built up which is equal to
any other rod. And equal rods added to equal rods produce equal rods.
Length is therefore a measurable property.
It is because these rules are true that measurement of these properties
is useful and possible; it is these rules that make the measurable prop-
210 N. R. Campbell

erties so similar to numbers, that it is possible and useful to represent

them by numerals the primary purpose of which is to represent numbers.
It is because of them that it is possible to find one, and only one numeral,
which will fitly represent each property; and it is because of them, that
these numerals, when they are found, tell us something useful about the
properties. One such use arises in the combination of bodies possessing
the properties. We may want to know how the property varies when
bodies possessing it are added in the way characteristic of measurement.
When we have assigned numerals to represent the property we shall
know that the body with the property 2 added to that with the property
3 will have the same property as that with the property 5, or as the
combination of the bodies with properties 4 and 1. This is not the place
to examine exactly how these conclusions are shown to be universally
valid; but they are valid only because the three rules are true.
The Laws of Measurement. But what is the nature of these rules? They
are laws established by definite experiment. The word “rule” has been
used hitherto, because it is not quite certain whether they are truly laws
in their application to number; but they certainly are laws in their
application to other measurable properties, such as weight or length.
The fact that the rules are true can be, and must be, determined by
experiment in the same way as the fact that any other laws are true.
Perhaps it may have appeared to the reader that the rules must be true;
that it requires no experiment to determine that bodies which balance
the same body will balance each other; and that it is inconceivable that
this rule should not be true. But I think he will change his opinion if it
is pointed out that the rule is actually true only in certain conditions;
for instance, it is only true if the balance is a good one, and has arms of
equal length and pans of equal weight. If the arms were unequal, the
rule would not be found to be true unless it were carefully prescribed in
which pan the bodies were placed during the judgment of equality. Again,
the rules would not be true of the property length, unless the rods were
straight and were rigid. In implying that the balance is good, and the
rods straight and rigid, we have implied definite laws which must be
true if the properties are to be measurable, namely that it is possible to
make a perfect balance, and that there are rods which are straight and
rigid. These are experimental laws; they could not be known apart from
definite experiment and observation of the external world; they are not
self-evident.
Accordingly the process of discovering that a property is measurable
in the way that has been described, and setting up a process for measur-
 M EAS U RE M E NT 211

ing it, is one that rests entirely upon experimental inquiry. It is a part,
and a most important part, of experimental science. Whenever a new
branch of physics is opened up (for, as has been said, physics is the
science that deals with such processes of measurement), the first step is
always to find some process for measuring the new properties that are
investigated; and it is not until this problem has been solved, that any
great progress can be made along the branch. Its solution demands the
discovery of new laws. We can actually trace the development of new
measurable properties in this way in the history of science. Before the
dawn of definite history, laws had been discovered which made
measurable some of the properties employed by modern science. History
practically begins with the Greeks, but before their time the properties,
weight, length, volume, and area had been found to be measurable; the
establishment of the necessary laws had probably occurred in the great
period of Babylonian and Egyptian civilization. The Greeks, largely in
the person of Archimedes, found how to measure force by establishing the
laws of the lever, and other mechanical systems. Again from the earliest
era, there have been rough methods of measuring periods of time,2 but a
true method, really obeying the three rules, was not discovered till the
seventeenth century; it arose out of Galileo’s laws of the pendulum. Modern
science has added greatly to the list of measurable properties; the science
of electricity is based on the discovery, by Cavendish and Coulomb, of
the law necessary to measure an electric charge; on the laws, discovered
by Öersted and Ampère, necessary to measure an electric current; and on
the laws, discovered by Ohm and Kirchhoff, necessary to measure electrical
resistance. And the discovery of similar laws has made possible the
development of other branches of physics.
But, it may be asked, has there ever been a failure to discover the
necessary laws? The answer is that there are certainly many properties
which are not measurable in the sense that we have been discussing;
there are more properties, definitely recognized by science, that are not so
measurable than are so measurable. But, as will appear presently, the very
nature of these properties makes it impossible that they should be measured
in this way. For the only properties to which this kind of measurement
seems conceivably applicable, are those which fulfil the condition
stated provisionally on p. 205; they must be such that the combina-

2. By a period of time I mean the thing that is measured when we say that it took us 3
hours to do so-and-so. This is a different “time” from that which is measured when we
say it is 3 o’clock. The difference is rather abstruse and cannot be discussed here; but
it may be mentioned that the “measurement” involved in “3 o’clock” is more like that
discussed later in the chapter.
212 N. R. Campbell

tion of objects possessing the property increases that property. For this is
the fundamental significance of the property number; it is something that
is increased by addition; any property which does not agree with number
in this matter cannot be very closely related to number and cannot possibly
be measured by the scheme that has been described. But it will be seen
that fulfilment of this condition only makes rule (2) true; it is at least
conceivable that a property might obey rule (2) and not rules (1) and (3).
Does that ever happen, or can we always find methods of addition and of
judging equality such that, if rule (2) is true, the laws are such that rules
(1) and (3) are also true? In the vast majority of cases we can find such
methods and such laws; and it is a very remarkable fact that we can; it is
only one more instance of the way in which nature kindly falls in with
our ideas of what ought to be. But I think there is one case in which the
necessary methods and laws have not yet been found and are not likely to
be found. It is a very difficult matter concerning which even expert
physicists might differ, and so no discussion of it can be entered on here.
But it is mentioned in order to impress the reader with the fact that
measurement does depend upon experimental laws; that it does depend
upon the facts of the external world; and that it is not wholly within our
power to determine whether we will or will not measure a certain property.
That is the feature of measurement which it is really important to grasp
for a proper understanding of science.
Multiplication. Before we pass to another kind of measurement reference
must be made to a matter which space does not allow to be discussed
completely. In stating the rules that were necessary in order that weight
should be measurable (p. 209), it was said that a collection having the
same weight as any given body could be made by adding other bodies to
that first selected. Now this statement is not strictly true; it is only true
if the body first selected has a smaller weight than any other body it is
desired to weigh; and even if this condition is fulfilled, it is not true if
the bodies added successively to the collection are of the same weight as
that first selected. Thus if my first body weighs 1 lb., I cannot by adding
to it make a collection which weighs less than 1 lb., and by adding
bodies which each weigh 1 lb., I cannot make a collection which has the
same weight as a body weighing (say) 2½ lb.
These facts, to which there is no true analogy in connection with
number, force us to recognize “fractions.” A considerable complication is
thereby introduced, and the reader must accept my assurance that they
can all be solved by simple developments of the process of measurement
that has been sketched. But for a future purpose it is necessary to notice
 M EAS U RE M E NT 213

very briefly the processes of the multiplication and division of magnitudes

on which the significance of fractions depends.
Suppose I have a collection of bodies, each of which has the same
weight 3, the number of bodies in the collection being 4. I may ask what
is the weight of the whole collection. The answer is given of course by
multiplying 3 by 4, and we all know now that the result of that operation
is 12. That fact, and all the other facts summed up in the multiplication
table which we learn at school, can be proved from the rules on which
weighing depend together with facts determined by counting numerals.
But the point I want to make is that multiplication represents a definite
experimental operation, namely the combination into a single collection,
placed on one pan of the balance, of a set of bodies, all of the same
weight, the number of those bodies being known. Division arises directly
out of multiplication. In place of asking what will be the weight of a
collection formed of a given number of bodies all of the same weight, we
ask what must be the weight of each of a collection of bodies, having a
given number, when the whole collection has a given weight. E.g., what
must each body weigh in order that the whole collection of 4 bodies
weighs 12? The answer is obtained by dividing 12 by 4. That answer is
obtained, partly from the multiplication table, partly by inventing new
numerals which we call fractions; but once again division corresponds
to a definite experimental operation and has its primary significance
because it corresponds to that operation. This is this conclusion that we
shall use in the sequel. But it is worth while noting that the fractions
which we obtain by this method of addition overcome the difficulty
from which this paragraph started. If we make all possible fractions of
our original weight (i.e., all possible bodies, such that some number of
them formed into a single collection have the same weight as the original
body), then, by adding together suitable collections of these fractions,
we can make up a collection which will have the same weight as any
body whatever that we desire to weigh. This result is an experimental
fact which could not have been predicted without experimental inquiry.
And the result is true, not only for the measurable property weight, but
for all properties measurable by the process that is applicable to weight.
Once more we see how much simpler and more conveniently things
turn out than we have really any right to expect; measurement would
have been a much more complex business if the law that has just been
stated were not always true.
Derived Measurement. Measurement, it was said on p. 204, is the
assignment of numbers (or, as we say now, numerals) to represent proper-
214 N. R. Campbell

ties. We have now considered one way in which this assignment is made,
and have brought to light the laws which must be true if this way is to
be possible. And it is the fundamental way. We are now going to consider
some other ways in which numerals are assigned to represent properties;
but it is important to insist at the outset, and to remember throughout,
that these other ways are wholly dependent upon the fundamental
process, which we have just been discussing, and must be so dependent
if the numerals are to represent “real properties” and to tell us something
scientifically significant about the bodies to which they are attached.
This statement is confirmed by history; all properties measured in the
definitely pre-scientific era were measured (or at least measurable) by the
fundamental process; that is true of weight, length, volume, area and
periods of time. The dependent measurement, which we are now about
to consider, is a product of definitely and consciously scientific
investigation, although the actual discovery may, in a few cases, be lost
in the mists of the past.
The property which we shall take as an example of this dependent or,
as it will be termed, derived measurement, is density. Every one has some
idea of what density means and realizes, vaguely at least, why we say
that iron is denser than wood or mercury than water; and most people
probably know how density is measured, and what is meant when it is
said that the density of iron is 8 times that of wood, and the density of
mercury 13½ times that of water. But they will feel also that there is
something more scientific and less purely common-sense about the
measurement of density than about the measurement of weight; as a
matter of fact the discovery of the measurement of density certainly falls
within the historic period and probably may be attributed to Archimedes
(about 250 B.C.). And a little reflection will convince them that there is
something essentially different in the two processes.
For what we mean when we say a body has a weight 2 is that a body
of the same weight can be made by combining 2 bodies of the weight 1;
that is the fundamental meaning of weight; it is what makes weight
physically important and, as we have just seen, makes it measurable. But
when we say that mercury has a density 13½ we do not mean that a body
of the same density can be prepared by combining 13½ bodies of the
density 1 (water). For, if we did mean that, the statement would not be
true. However many pieces of water we take, all of the same density,
we cannot produce a body with any different density. Combine water
with water as we will, the resulting body has the density of water. And
this, a little reflection will show, is part of the fundamental meaning
 M EAS U RE M E NT 215

of density; density is something that is characteristic of all pieces of

water, large and small. The density of water, a “quality” of it, is something
fundamentally independent of and in contrast with the weight of water,
the “quantity” of it.
But the feature of density, from which it derives its importance, makes
it totally impossible to measure density by the fundamental process
discussed earlier in the chapter. How then do we measure it? Before we
answer that question, it will be well to put another. As was insisted
before, if measurement is really to mean anything, there must be some
important resemblance between the property measured, on the one hand,
and the numerals assigned to represent it, on the other. In fundamental
measurement, this resemblance (or the most important part of it) arises
from the fact that the property is susceptible to addition following the
same rules as that of number, with which numerals are so closely
associated. That resemblance fails here. What resemblance is left?
Measurement and Order. There is left a resemblance in respect of “order.”
The numerals are characterized, in virtue of their use to represent
numbers, by a definite order; they are conventionally arranged in a series
in which the sequence is determined: “2” follows “1” and is before “3”;
“3” follows “2” and is before “4” and so on. This characteristic order of
numerals is applied usefully for many purposes in modern life; we
“number” the pages of a book or the houses of a street, not in order to
know the number of pages in the book or of houses in the street—nobody
but the printer or the rate-surveyor cares about that—but in order to be
able to find any given page or house easily. If we want p. 201 and the
book opens casually at p. 153 we know in which direction to turn the
pages.3 Order then is characteristic of numerals; it is also characteristic
of the properties represented by numerals in the manner we are
considering now. This is our feature which makes the “measurement”
significant. Thus, in our example, bodies have a natural order of density
which is independent of actual measurement. We might define the words
“denser” or “less dense” as applied to liquids (and the definition could
easily be extended to solids) by saying that the liquid A is denser than B,
and B less dense than A, if a substance can be found which will float in A
but not in B. And, if we made the attempt, we should find that by use of
this definition we could place all liquids in a definite order, such that each

3. Numerals are also used to represent objects, such as soldiers or telephones, which have
no natural order. They are used here because they provide an inexhaustible series of
names, in virtue of the ingenious device by which new numerals can always be invented
when the old ones have been used up.
216 N. R. Campbell

member of the series was denser than the preceding and less dense than
the following member. We might then assign to the first liquid the density
1, to the second 2, and so on; and we should then have assigned numerals
in a way which would be physically significant and indicate definite
physical facts. The fact that A was represented by 2 and B by 7 would
mean that there was some solid body which would float in B, but not in
A. We should have achieved something that might fairly be called
measurement.
Here again it is important to notice that the possibility of such
measurement depends upon definite laws; we could not have predicted
beforehand that such an arrangement of liquids was possible unless we
knew these laws. One law involved is this: If B is denser than A, and C
denser than B, then C is denser than A. That sounds like a truism; but
it is not. According to our definition it implies that the following statement
is always true: If a body X floats in B and sinks in A, then if another
body Y sinks in B it will also sink in A. That is a statement of facts;
nothing but experiment could prove that it is true; it is a law. And if it
were not true, we could not arrange liquids naturally in a definite order.
For the test with X would prove that B was denser than A, while the test
with Y (floating in A, but sinking in B) would prove that A was denser
than B. Are we then to put A before or after B in the order of density?
We should not know. The order would be indeterminate and, whether
we assigned a higher or a lower numeral to A than to B, the assignment
would represent no definite physical fact: it would be arbitrary.
In order to show that the difficulty might occur, and that it is an
experimental law that it does not occur, an instance in which a similar
difficulty has actually occurred may be quoted. An attempt has been
made to define the “hardness” of a body by saying that A is harder than
B if A will scratch B. Thus diamond will scratch glass, glass iron, iron
lead, lead chalk, and chalk butter; so that the definition leads to the
order of hardness: diamond, glass, iron, lead, chalk, butter. But if there
is to be a definite order, it must be true in all cases that if A is harder
than B and B than C, then A is harder than C; in other words, if A will
scratch B and B C, then A will scratch C. But it is found experimentally
that there are exceptions to this rule, when we try to include all bodies
within it and not only such simple examples as have been quoted.
Accordingly the definition does not lead to a definite order of hardness
and does not permit the measurement of hardness.
There are other laws of the same kind that have to be true if the order
is to be definite and the measurement significant; but they will not be
 M EAS U RE M E NT 217

given in detail. One of them the reader may discover for himself, if he
will consider the property colour. Colour is not a property measurable
in the way we are considering, and for this reason. If we take all reds
(say) of a given shade, we can arrange them definitely in an order of
lightness and darkness; but no colour other than red will fall in this
order. On the other hand, we might possibly take all shades and arrange
them in order of redness—pure red, orange, yellow, and so on; but in
this order there would be no room for reds of different lightness. Colours
cannot be arranged in a single order, and it is for this reason that colour
is not measurable as is density.
Numerical Laws. But though arrangement in this manner in an order
and the assignment of numerals in the order of the properties are to
some extent measurement and represent something physically significant,
there is still a large arbitrary element involved. If the properties A, B, C,
D, are naturally arranged in that order, then in assigning numerals to
represent the properties I must not assign to A 10, to B 3, to C 25, to D
18; for if I did so the order of the numerals would not be that of the
properties. But I have an endless number of alternatives left; I might put
A 1, B 2, C 3, D 4; or A 10, B 100, C 1,000, D 10,000; or A 3, B 9, C
27, D 81; and so on. In the true and fundamental measurement of the
first part of the chapter there was no such latitude. When I had fixed
the numeral to be assigned to one property, there was no choice at all of
the numerals to be assigned to the others; they were all fixed. Can I
remove this latitude here too and find a way of fixing definitely what
numeral is to be assigned to represent each property?
In some cases, I can; and one of these cases is density. The procedure
is this. I find that by combining the numerals representing other properties
of the bodies, which can be measured definitely according to the
fundamental process, I can obtain a numeral for each body, and that
these numerals lie in the order of the property I want to measure. If I
take these numerals as representing the property, then I still get numerals
in the right order, but the numeral for each property is definitely fixed.
An example will be clearer than this general statement. In the case of
density, I find that if I measure the weight and the volume of a body
(both measurable by the fundamental process and therefore definitely fixed),
and I divide the weight by the volume, then the numerals thus obtained
for different bodies lie in the order of their densities, as density was defined
on pp. 215–216. Thus I find that 1 gallon of water weighs 10 lb., but 1
gallon of mercury weighs 135 lb.; the weight divided by the volume for
water is 10, for mercury is 135; 135 is greater than 10; accordingly, if the
218 N. R. Campbell

method is correct, mercury should be denser than water and any body
which sinks in mercury should sink in water. And that is actually found
to be true. If therefore I take as the measure of the density of a substance,
its weight divided by its volume, then I get a number which is definitely
fixed,4 and the order of which represents the order of density. I have
arrived at a method of measurement which is as definitely fixed as the
fundamental process and yet conveys adequately the physically significant
facts about order.
The invention of this process of measurement for properties not suited
for fundamental measurement is a very notable achievement of deliberate
scientific investigation. The process was not invented by common sense;
it was certainly invented in the historic period, but it was not until the
middle of the eighteenth century that its use became widespread. 5 To-
day it is one of the most powerful weapons of scientific investigation;
and it is because so many of the properties of importance to other sciences
are measured in this way that physics, the science to which this process
belongs, is so largely the basis of other sciences. But it may appear
exceedingly obvious to the reader, and he may wonder why the invention
was delayed so long. He may say that the notion of density, in the sense
that a given volume of the denser substance weighs more than the same
volume of the less dense, is the fundamental notion; it is what we mean
when we speak of one substance being denser (or in popular language
“heavier”) than another; and that all that has been discovered in this
instance is that the denser body, in this sense, is also denser in the sense
of pp. 215–216. This in itself would be a very noteworthy discovery, but
the reader who raises such an objection has overlooked a yet more
noteworthy discovery that is involved.
For we have observed that it is one of the most characteristic features
of density that it is the same for all bodies, large and small, made of the
same substance. It is this feature which makes it impossible to measure it
by the fundamental process. The new process will be satisfactory only if
it preserves this feature. If we are going to represent density by the weight
divided by the volume, the density of all bodies made of the same sub-

4. Except in so far as I may change the units in which I measure weights and volume. I
should get a different number if I measured the volume in pints and the weight in tons.
But this latitude in the choice of units introduces a complication which it will be better
to leave out of account here. There is no reason why we should not agree once and for
all to use the same units; and if we did that the complication would not arise.
5. I think that until the eighteenth century only two properties were measured in this way
which were not measurable by the fundamental process, namely density and constant
acceleration.
 M EAS U RE M E NT 219

stance will be the same, as it should be, only if for all of them the weight
divided by the density is the same, that is to say, in rather more technical
language, if the weight is proportional to the density. In adopting the
new process for measuring density and assigning numerals to represent
it in a significant manner, we are, in fact, assuming that, for portions of
the same substance, whether they are large or small, the weight is
proportional to the volume. If we take a larger portion of the same
substance and thereby double the weight, we must find, if the process of
measurement is to be a success, that we also double the volume; and this
law must be true for all substances to which the conception of density is
applicable at all.
Of course every one knows that this relation is actually true; it is so
familiar that we are apt to forget that it is an experimental truth that was
discovered relatively late in the history of civilization, which easily might
not be true. Perhaps it is difficult to-day to conceive that when we take
“more” of a substance (meaning thereby a greater volume) the weight
should not increase, but it is quite easy to conceive that the weight
should not increase proportionally to the volume; and yet it is upon
strict proportionality that the measurement of density actually depends.
If the weight had not been proportional to the volume, it might still
have been possible to measure density, so long as there was some fixed
numerical relation between weight and volume. It is this idea of a fixed
numerical relation, or, as we shall call it henceforward, a numerical law,
that is the basis of the “derived” process of measurement that we are
considering; and the process is of such importance to science because it
is so intimately connected with such numerical laws. The recognition
of such laws is the foundation of modern physics.
The Importance of Measurement. For why is the process of measurement
of such vital importance; why are we so concerned to assign numerals to
represent properties. One reason doubtless is that such assignment enables
us to distinguish easily and minutely between different but similar
properties. It enables us to distinguish between the density of lead and
iron far more simply and accurately than we could do by saying that
lead is rather denser than iron, but not nearly so dense as gold—and so
on. But for that purpose the “arbitrary” measurement of density,
depending simply on the arrangements of the substances in their order
(pp. 215–216), would serve equally well. The true answer to our question
is seen by remembering . . . that the terms between which laws express
relationships are themselves based on laws and represent collections of other
terms related by laws. When we measure a property, either by the funda-
220 N. R. Campbell

mental process or by the derived process, the numeral which we assign

to represent it is assigned as the result of experimental laws; the
assignment implies laws. And therefore, in accordance with our principle,
we should expect to find that other laws could be discovered relating
the numerals so assigned to each other or to something else; while if we
assigned numerals arbitrarily without reference to laws and implying no
laws, then we should not find other laws involving these numerals.
This expectation is abundantly fulfilled, and nowhere is there a clearer
example of the fact that the terms involved in laws themselves imply
laws. When we can measure a property truly, as we can volume (by the
fundamental process) or density (by the derived process) then we are
always able to find laws in which these properties are involved; we find,
e.g., the law that volume is proportional to weight or that density
determines, in a certain precise fashion, the sinking or floating of bodies.
But when we cannot measure it truly, then we do not find a law. An
example is provided by the property “hardness” (p. 216); the difficulties
met with in arranging bodies in order of hardness have been overcome;
but we still do not know of any way of measuring, by the derived process,
the property hardness; we know of no numerical law which leads to a
numeral which always follows the order of hardness. And so, as we
expect, we do not know any accurate and general laws relating hardness
to other properties. It is because true measurement is essential to the
discovery of laws that it is of such vital importance to science.
One final remark should be made before we pass on. In this chapter
there has been much insistence on the distinction between fundamental
measurement (such as is applicable to weight) and derived measurement
(such as is applicable to density). And the distinction is supremely
important, because it is the first kind of measurement which alone makes
the second possible. But the reader who, when he studies some science
in detail, tries, as he should, to discover which of the two processes is
involved in the measurement of the various properties characteristic of
that science, may occasionally find difficulty in answering the question.
It should be pointed out, therefore, that it is quite possible for a property
to be measurable by both processes. For all properties measurable by the
fundamental process must have a definite order; for the physical property,
number, to which they are so similar, has an order—the order of “more” or
“less.” This order of number is reflected in the order of the numerals used
to represent number. But if it is to be measurable by the derived process, it
must also be such that it is also a “constant” in a numerical law—a term
that is just going to be explained in the next chapter. There is nothing in
 M EAS U RE M E NT 221

the nature of fundamental measurement to show that a property to which

it is applicable may not fulfil this condition also; and sometimes the
condition is fulfilled, and then the property is measurable either by the
fundamental or the derived process. However, it must be remembered
that the properties involved in the numerical law must be such that they
are fundamentally measurable; for otherwise the law could not be
established. The neglect of this condition is apt to lead to confusion;
but with this bare hint the matter must be left.
 Numerical Laws and the Use
of Mathematics in Science

n the previous chapter we concluded that density was a measurable

property because there is a fixed numerical relation, asserted by a
“numerical law,” between the weight of a substance and its volume. In
this chapter we shall examine more closely the idea of a numerical law,
and discover how it leads to such exceedingly important developments.
Let us first ask exactly what we do when we are trying to discover a
numerical law, such as that between weight and volume. We take various
portions of a substance, measure their weights and their volumes, and
put down the result in two parallel columns in our notebook. Thus I
may find these results:
Table I
Weight Volume Weight Volume
1 7 4 28
2 14 10 70
3 21 29 203

I now try to find some fixed relation between the corresponding numbers
in the two columns; and I shall succeed in that attempt if I can find
some rule whereby, starting with the number in one column, I can arrive
at the corresponding number in the other. If I find such a rule—and if
the rule holds good for all the further measurements that I may make—
then I have discovered a numerical law.
In the example we have taken the rule is easy to find. I have only to
divide the numbers in the second column by 7 in order to arrive at those in
the first, or multiply those in the first by 7 in order to arrive at those in the
second. That is a definite rule which I can always apply whatever the
numbers are; it is a rule which might always be true, but need not always
be true; whether or no it is true is a matter for experiment to decide. So
much is obvious; but now I want to ask a further and important question.

222
 N U M E RICAL LAWS AN D MATH E MATICS 223

How did we ever come to discover this rule; what suggested to us to try
division or multiplication by 7: and what is the precise significance of
division and multiplication in this connection?
The Source of Numerical Relations. The answer to the first part of this
question is given by the discussion on p. 213. Division and multiplication
are operations of importance in the counting of objects; in such counting
the relation between 21, 7, 3 (the third of which results from the division
of the first by the second) corresponds to a definite relation between the
things counted; it implies that if I divide the 21 objects into 7 groups,
each containing the same number of objects, then the number of objects
in each of the 7 groups is 3. By examining such relations through the
experimental process of counting we arrive at the multiplication (or
division) table. This table, when it is completed, states a long series of
relations between numerals, each of which corresponds to an
experimental fact; the numerals represent physical properties (numbers)
and in any given relation (e.g., 7 × 3 = 21) each numeral represents a
different property. But when we have got the multiplication table, a
statement of relations between numerals, we can regard it, and do usually
regard it, simply as a statement of relations between numerals; we can
think about it without any regard to what those numerals represented
when we were drawing up the table. And if any other numerals are
presented to our notice, it is possible and legitimate to ask whether these
numerals, whatever they may represent, are in fact related as are the
numerals in the multiplication table. In particular, when we are seeking
a numerical relation between the columns of Table I, we may inquire,
and it is natural for us to inquire, whether by means of the multiplication
we can find a rule which will enable us to arrive at the numeral in the
second column starting from that in the first.
That explains why it is so natural to us to try division when we are
seeking a relation between numbers. But it does not answer the second
part of the question; for in the numerical law that we are considering,
the relation between the things represented by the numerals is not that
which we have just noticed between things counted. When we say that,
by dividing the volume by 7, we can arrive at the weight, we do not mean
that the weight is the volume of each of the things at which we arrive by
dividing the substance into 7 portions, each having the same volume.
For a weight can never be a volume, any more than a soldier can be a
number; it can only be represented by the same numeral as a volume, as
a soldier can be represented by a numeral which also represents a number.
The distinction is rather subtle, but if the reader is to understand what
224 N. R. Campbell

follows, he must grasp it. The relation which we have found between
weight and volume is a pure numerical relation; it is suggested by the
relation between actual things, namely collections which we count; but
it is not that relation. The difference may be expressed again by means
of the distinction between numbers and numerals. The relation between
actual things counted is a relation between the numbers—which are
physical properties—of those things; the relation between weight and
volume is a relation between numerals, the numerals that are used to
represent those properties. The physical relation in the second case is
not between numbers at all, but between weight and volume which are
properties quite different from numbers; it appears very similar to that
between numbers only because we use numerals, originally invented to
represent numbers, to represent other properties. The relation stated by
a numerical law is a relation between numerals, and only between
numerals, though the idea that there may be such a relation has been
suggested to us by the study of the physical property, number.
If we understand this, we shall see what a very remarkable thing it is
that there should be numerical laws at all, and shall see why the idea of
such a law arose comparatively late in the history of science. For even
when we know the relations between numbers, there is no reason to believe
that there must be any relations of the same kind between the numerals
which are used to represent, not only numbers, but also other properties.
Until we actually tried, there was no reason to think that it must be possible
to find at all numerical laws, stating numerical relations such as those of
division and multiplication. The fact that there are such relations is a new
fact, and ought to be surprising. As has been said so often, it does frequently
turn out that suggestions made simply by our habits of mind are actually
true; and it is because they are so often true that science is interesting. But
every time they are true there is reason for wonder and astonishment.
And there is a further consequence yet more deserving of our attention
at present. If we realize that the numerical relations in numerical laws,
though suggested by relations between numbers, are not those relations,
we shall be prepared to find also numerical relations which are not even
suggested by relations between numbers, but only by relations between
numerals. Let me take an example. Consider the pairs of numerals
(1, 1), (2, 4), (3, 9), (4, 16) . . . Our present familiarity with numerals
enables us to see at once what is the relation between each pair; it is that
the second numeral of the pair is arrived at by multiplying the first
numeral by itself; 1 is equal to 1 × 1, 4 to 2 × 2, 9 to 3 × 3; and so on. But,
if the reader will consider the matter, he will see that the multiplication
 N U M E RICAL LAWS AN D MATH E MATICS 225

of a number (the physical property of an object) by itself does not

correspond to any simple relation between the things counted; by the
mere examination of counted objects, we should never be led to consider
such an operation at all. It is suggested to us only because we have
drawn up our multiplication table and have reached the idea of
multiplying one numeral by another, irrespective of what is represented
by that numeral. We know what is the result of multiplying 3 × 3, when
the two 3’s represent different numbers and the multiplication
corresponds to a physical operation on things counted; it occurs to us
that the multiplication of 3 by itself, when the two 3’s represent the same
thing, although it does not correspond to a physical relation, may yet
correspond to the numerical relation in a numerical law. And we find
once more that this suggestion turns out to be true; there are numerical
laws in which this numerical relation is found. Thus if we measure (1)
the time during which a body starting from rest has been falling (2) the
distance through which it has fallen during that time, we should get in
our notebook parallel columns like this:
Table II
Time Distance Time Distance
1 1 4 16
2 4 5 25
3 9 6 36
The numerals in the second column are arrived at by multiplying those
in the first by themselves; in technical language, the second column is
the “square” of the first.
Another example. In place of dividing one column by some fixed
number in order to get the other, we may use the multiplication table to
divide some fixed number (e.g., 1) by that column. Then we should get
the table
1 1.00 3 0.33
2 0.50 4 0.25
5 0.20

and so on. Here, again, is a pure numerical operation which does not
correspond to any simple physical relation upon numbers; there is no
collection simply related to another collection in such a way that the
number of the first is equal to that obtained by dividing 1 by the number
of the second. (Indeed, as we have seen that fractions have no application
to number, and since this rule must lead to fractions, there cannot be
such a relation.) And yet once more we find that this numerical relation
does occur in a numerical law. If the first column represented the pressure
226 N. R. Campbell

on a given amount of gas, the second would represent the volume of

that gas.
So far, all the relations we have considered were derived directly
from the multiplication table. But an extension of the process that we
are tracing leads to relations which cannot be derived directly and
thus carries us further from the original suggestions indicated by mere
counting. Let us return to Table II, and consider what would happen
if we found for the numerals in the second column values intermediate
between those given. Suppose we measured the distance first and found
2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 . . . ; what does the rule lead us
to expect for the corresponding entries in the first column, the values
of the time. The answer will be given if in the multiplication table we
can find numerals which, when multiplied by themselves, give 2, 3, 5
. . . But a search will reveal that there are no such numerals. We can
find numerals which, when multiplied by themselves give very nearly
2, 3, 5 . . . ; for instance, 1.41, 1.73, 2.24 give 1.9881, 2.9929, 5.0166,
and we could find numerals which would come even closer to those
desired. And that is really all we want, for our measurements are never
perfectly accurate, and if we can get numerals which agree very nearly
with our rule, that is all that we can expect. But the search for such
numerals would be a very long and tedious business; it would involve
our drawing up an enormously complicated multiplication table,
including not only whole numbers but also fractions with many decimal
places. And so the question arises if we cannot find some simpler rule
for obtaining quickly the number which multiplied by itself will come
as close as we please to 2, 3, 4 . . . Well, we can; the rule is given in
every textbook of arithmetic; it need not be given here. The point
which interests us is that, just as the simple multiplication of two
numerals suggested a new process, namely the multiplication of a
numeral by itself, so this new process suggests in its turn many other
and more complicated processes. To each of these new processes
corresponds a new rule for relating numerals and for arriving at one
starting from another; and to each new rule may correspond a numerical
law. We thus get many fresh forms of numerical law suggested, and
some of them will be found to represent actual experiments.
This process for extending arithmetical operations beyond the simple
division and multiplication from which we start; the consequent invention
of new rules for relating numerals and deriving one from another; and
the study of the rules, when they are invented—all this is a purely
intellectual process. It does not depend on experiment at all; experiment enters
 N U M E RICAL LAWS AN D MATH E MATICS 227

only when we inquire whether there is an actual experimental law stating

one of the invented numerical relations between measured properties.
The process is, in fact, part of mathematics, not of experimental science;
and one of the reasons why mathematics is useful to science is that it
suggests possible new forms for numerical laws. Of course the examples
that have been given are extremely elementary, and the actual mathematics
of to-day has diverged very widely from such simple considerations; but
the invention of such rules leads, logically if not historically, to one of
the great branches of modern mathematics, the theory of functions. (When
two numbers are related as in our tables, they are technically said to be
“functions” of each other.) It has been developed by mathematicians to
satisfy their own intellectual needs, their sense of logical neatness and
of form; but though great tracts of it have no bearing whatever upon
experimental science, it still remains remarkable how often relations
developed by the mathematician for his own purposes prove in the end
to have direct and immediate application to the experimental facts of
science.
Numerical Laws and Derived Measurement. In this discussion there has
been overlooked temporarily the feature of numerical laws which, in
the previous chapter, we decided gave rise to their importance, namely,
that they made possible systems of derived measurement. In the first
law, taken as an example (Table I), the rule by which the numerals in
the second column were derived from those in the first involved a
numeral 7, which was not a member of those columns, but an additional
number applicable equally to all members of the columns. This constant
numeral, characteristic of the rule asserted by the numerical law,
represented a property of the system investigated and permitted a
derived measurement of that system. But in Table I I, there is no such
constant numeral; the rule for obtaining the second from the first
column is simply that the numerals in the first column are to be
multiplied by themselves; no other numeral is involved. But this
simplicity is really misleading; we should not, except by a mere
“fluke,” ever get such a table as Table I I as a result of our
measurements. The reason is this. Suppose that, in obtaining Table II,
we have measured the time in seconds and the distance fallen in feet;
and that we now propose to write down the result of exactly the same
measurements, measuring the time in minutes and the distances in
yards. Then the numerals in the first column, representing exactly the
same observations, would all be divided by 60 and those in the second
would all be divided by 3; the observation which was represented before
228 N. R. Campbell

by 60 in the first column would now be represented by 1; and the number

in the second column represented before by 3 would now be represented
by 1. If I now apply the rule to the two columns I shall find it will not
work; the second is not the first multiplied by itself. But there will be a
new rule, as the reader may see for himself; it will be that the second
column is the same as the first, when the first is (1) multiplied by itself,
and (2) the result multiplied by 1,200. And if we measured the time and
the distance in some other units (say hours and miles), we should again
have to amend our rule, but it would only differ from the former rule in
the substitution for 1,200 of some other numeral. If we choose our units
in yet a third way, we should get a third rule, and this time the constant
numeral might be 1. We should have exactly Table II; but we should get
that table exactly only because we had chosen our units of time and
distance in a particular way.
These considerations are quite general. Whatever the numerical law,
the rule involved in it will be changed by changing the unit in which
we measure the properties represented by the two columns; but the change
will only consist in the substitution of one constant numeral for another.
If we chance to choose the units in some particular way, that constant
numeral may turn out to be 1 and so will disappear from sight. But it
will always be there. There must be associated with every numerical
law, involving a rule for arriving at the numerals in one column from
those in the other, some constant numeral which is applicable to all
members of the column alike. And this constant may always, as in the
case of density, be the measure of some property to which derived
measurement is applicable. Every numerical law therefore—this is the
conclusion to be enforced—may give rise to a system of derived
measurement; and as a matter of fact all important numerical laws do
actually so give rise.
Calculation. But though the establishment of system of derived
measurement is one use of numerical laws, they have also another use,
which is even more important. They permit calculation. This is an extremely
important conception which deserves our close attention.
Calculation is the process of combining two or more numerical laws
in such a way as to produce a third numerical law. The simplest form of
it may be illustrated by the following example. We know the following
two laws which, in rather different forms, have been quoted before: (1)
the weight of a given volume of any substance is proportional to its
density; (2) the density of a gas is proportional to the pressure upon it.
From these two laws we can deduce the third law: the weight of a given
 N U M E RICAL LAWS AN D MATH E MATICS 229

volume of any gas is proportional to the pressure upon it. That conclusion
seems to follow directly without any need for further experiments.
Accordingly we appear to have arrived at a fresh numerical law without
adducing any fresh experimental evidence. But is that possible? All our
previous inquiry leads us to believe that laws, whether numerical or
other, can only be proved by experimental inquiry and that the proof of
a new law without new experimental evidence is impossible. How are
we to reconcile the two conclusions? When we have answered that
question we shall understand what is the importance of calculation for
science.
Let us first note that it is possible, without violating the conclusions
already reached, to deduce something from a numerical law by a process
of mere thought without new experiment. For instance, from the law
that the density of iron is 7, I can deduce that a portion of it which has
a volume 1 will have a weight 7. But this deduction is merely stating in
new terms what was asserted by the original law; when I said that the
density of iron was 7, I meant (among other things) that a volume 1 had
a weight 7; if I had not meant that I should never have asserted the law.
The “deduction” is nothing but a translation of the law (or of part of it)
into different language, and is of no greater scientific importance than a
translation from (say) English into French. One kind of translation, like
the other, may have useful results, but it is not the kind of useful result
that is obtained from calculation. Pure deduction never achieves anything
but this kind of translation; it never leads to anything new. But the
calculation taken as an example does lead to something new. Neither
when I asserted the first law, nor when I asserted the second did I mean
what is asserted by the third; I might have asserted the first without
knowing the second and the second without knowing the first (for I
might have known what the density of a gas was under different
conditions without knowing precisely how it is measured); and I might
have asserted either of them, without knowing the third. The third law
is not merely an expression in different words of something known before;
it is a new addition to knowledge.
But we have added to knowledge only because we have introduced
an assertion which was not contained in the two original statements.
The deduction depends on the fact that if one thing (A) is proportional
to another thing (B) and if B is proportional to a third thing (C), then A
is proportional to C. This proposition was not contained in the original
statements. But, the reader may reply, it was so contained, because it is
involved in the very meaning of “proportional”; when we say that A is pro-
230 N. R. Campbell

portional to B, we mean to imply the fact which has just been stated.
Now that is perfectly true if we are thinking of the mathematical meaning
of “proportional,” but it is not true if we are thinking of the physical
meaning. The proposition which we have really used in making our
deduction is this: If weight is proportional (in the mathematical sense)
to density, when weight is varied by taking different substances, then it
is also proportional to density when weight is varied by compressing
more of the same substance into the same volume. That is a statement
which experiment alone can prove, and it is because we have in fact
assumed that experimental statement that we have been able to “deduce”
a new piece of experimental knowledge. It is involved in the original
statements only if, when it is said that density is proportional to pressure,
it is implied that it has been ascertained by experiment that the law of
density is true, and that there is a constant density of a gas, however
compressed, given by dividing the weight by the volume.
The conclusion I want to draw is this. When we appear to arrive at
new scientific knowledge by mere deduction from previous knowledge,
we are always assuming some experimental fact which is not clearly
involved in the original statements. What we usually assume is that some
law is true in circumstances rather more general than those we have
considered hitherto. Of course the assumption may be quite legitimate,
for the great value of laws is that they are applicable to circumstances
more general than those of the experiments on which they are based; but
we can never be perfectly sure that it is legitimate until we try. Calculation,
then, when it appears to add anything to our knowledge, is always slightly
precarious; like theory, it suggests strongly that some law may be true,
rather than proves definitely that some law must be true.
So far we have spoken of calculation as if it were merely deduction;
we have not referred to the fact that calculation always involves a special
type of deduction, namely mathematical deduction. For there are, of
course, forms of deduction which are not mathematical. All argument is
based, or should be based, upon the logical processes which are called
deduction; and most of us are prepared to argue, however slight our
mathematical attainments. I do not propose to discuss here generally
what are the distinctive characteristics of mathematical argument; for an
exposition of that matter the reader should turn to works in which mathe-
maticians expound their own study.1 I want only to consider why it is that

1. See, for example, the essays in this volume by Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Poincaré,
A. R. Forsyth, and Lancelot Hogben.
 N U M E RICAL LAWS AN D MATH E MATICS 231

this kind of deduction has such a special significance for science. And,
stated briefly, the reason is this. The assumption, mentioned in the last
paragraph, which is introduced in the process of deduction, is usually
suggested by the form of the deduction and by the ideas naturally
associated with it. (Thus, in the example we took, the assumption is
suggested by the proposition quoted about proportionality which is the
idea especially associated by the form of the deduction). The assumptions
thus suggested by mathematical deduction are almost invariably found
to be actually true. It is this fact which gives to mathematical deduction
its special significance for science.
The Newtonian Assumption. Again an example is necessary and we will
take one which brings us close to the actual use of mathematics in science.
Let us return to Table II which gives the relation between the time for
which a body has fallen and the distance through which it has fallen.
The falling body, like all moving bodies, has a “velocity.” By the velocity
of a body we mean the distance that it moves in a given time, and we
measure the velocity by dividing that distance by that time (as we measure
density by dividing the weight by the volume). But this way of measuring
velocity gives a definite result only when the velocity is constant, that is
to say, when the distance travelled is proportional to the time and the
distance travelled in any given time is always the same (compare what
was said about density on pp. 217–218). This condition is not fulfilled
in our example; the distance fallen in the first second is 1, in the next 3,
in the third 5, in the next 7—and so on. We usually express that fact by
saying that the velocity increases as the body falls; but we ought really to
ask ourselves whether there is such a thing as velocity in this case and
whether, therefore, the statement can mean anything. For what is the
velocity of the body at the end of the 3rd second—i.e. at the time called 3.
We might say that it is to be found by taking the distance travelled in the
second before 3, which is 5, or in the second after 3, which is 7, or in the
second of which the instant “3” is the middle (from 2½ to 3½), which
turns out to be 6. Or again we might say it is to be found by taking half the
distance travelled in the two seconds of which “3” is the middle (from 2
to 4) which is again 6. We get different values for the velocity according
to which of these alternatives we adopt. There are doubtless good reasons
in this example for choosing the alternative 6, for two ways (and really
many more than two ways, all of them plausible) lead to the same result.
But if we took a more complicated relation between time and distance
than that of Table II, we should find that these two ways gave different
results, and that neither of them were obviously more plausible than any
232 N. R. Campbell

alternative. Do then we mean anything by velocity in such cases and, if

so, what do we mean?
It is here that mathematics can help us. By simply thinking about the
matter Newton, the greatest of mathematicians, devised a rule by which
he suggested that velocity might be measured in all such cases.2 It is a
rule applicable to every kind of relation between time and distance that
actually occurs; and it gives the “plausible” result whenever that relation
is so simple that one rule is more plausible than another. Moreover it is
a very pretty and ingenious rule; it is based on ideas which are themselves
attractive and in every way it appeals to the aesthetic sense of the
mathematician. It enables us, when we know the relation between time
and distance, to measure uniquely and certainly the velocity at every
instant, in however complicated a way the velocity may be changing. It
is therefore strongly suggested that we take as the velocity the value
obtained according to this rule.
But can there be any question whether we are right or wrong to take
that value; can experiment show that we ought to take one value rather
than another? Yes, it can; and in this way. When the velocity is constant
and we can measure it without ambiguity, then we can establish laws
between that velocity and certain properties of the moving body. Thus,
if we allow a moving steel ball to impinge on a lead block, it will make a
dent in it determined by its velocity; and when we have established by
observations of this kind a relation between the velocity and the size of
the dent, we can obviously use the size of the dent to measure the velocity.
Suppose now our falling body is a steel ball, and we allow it to impinge
on a lead block after falling through different distances; we shall find
that its velocity, estimated by the size of the dent, agrees exactly with the
velocity estimated by Newton’s rule, and not with that estimated by any
other rule (so long, of course, as the other rule does not give the same
result as Newton’s). That, I hope the reader will agree, is a very definite
proof that Newton’s rule is right.
On this account only Newton’s rule would be very important, but it
has a wider and much more important application. So far we have expressed
the rule as giving the velocity at any instant when the relation between
time and distance is known; but the problem might be reversed. We might
know the velocity at any instant and want to find out how far the body has
moved in any given time. If the velocity were the same at all instants, the
2. I purposely refrain from giving the rule, not because it is really hard to explain, but
because I want to make clear that what is important is to have some rule, not any
particular rule.
 N U M E RICAL LAWS AN D MATH E MATICS 233

problem would be easy; the distance would be the velocity multiplied

by the time. But if it is not the same, the right answer is by no means
easy to obtain; in fact the only way of obtaining it is by the use of Newton’s
rule. The form of that rule makes it easy to reverse it and, instead of
obtaining the velocity from the distance, to obtain the distance from the
velocity; but until that rule was given, the problem could not have been
solved; it would have baffled the wisest philosophers of Greece. Now
this particular problem is not of any very great importance, for it would
be easier to measure by experiment the distance moved than to measure
the velocity and calculate the distance. But there are closely analogous
cases—one of which we shall notice immediately—in which the position
will be reversed. Let us therefore ask what is the assumption which, in
accordance with the conclusion reached on p. 230, must be introduced,
if the solution of the problem is to give new experimental knowledge.
We have seen that the problem could be solved easily if the velocity
were constant; what we are asking, is how it is to be solved if the velocity
does not remain constant. If we examined the rule by which the solution
is obtained, we should find that it involves the assumption that the effect
upon the distance travelled of a certain velocity at a given instant of time
is the same as it would be if the body had at that instant the same constant
velocity. We know how far the body would travel at that instant if the
velocity were constant, and the assumption tells us that it will travel at
that instant the same distance although the velocity is not constant. To
obtain the whole distance travelled in any given time, we have to add up
the distances travelled at the instants of which that time is made up; the
reversed Newtonian rule gives a simple and direct method for adding up
these distances, and thus solves the problem. It should be noted that the
assumption is one that cannot possibly be proved by experiment; we are
assuming that something would happen if things were not what they
actually are; and experiment can only tell us about things as they are.
Accordingly calculation of this kind must, in all strictness, always be
confirmed by experiment before it is certain. But as a matter of fact, the
assumption is one of which we are almost more certain than we are of
any experiment. It is characteristic, not only of the particular example
that we have been considering, but of the whole structure of modern
mathematical physics which has arisen out of the work of Newton. We
should never think it really necessary to-day to confirm by experiment
the results of calculation based on that assumption; indeed if experiment
and calculation did not agree, we should always maintain that the former
and not the latter was wrong. But the assumption is there, and it is primarily
234 N. R. Campbell

suggested by the aesthetic sense of the mathematician, not dictated by the

facts of the external world. Its certainty is yet one more striking instance
of the conformity of the external world with our desires.
And now let us glance at an example in which such calculation
becomes of real importance. Let us take a pendulum, consisting of a
heavy bob at the end of a pivoted rod, draw it aside and then let it
swing. We ask how it will swing, what positions the bob will occupy at
various times after it is started. Our calculation proceeds from two
known laws. (1) We know how the force on the pendulum varies with
its position. That we can find out by actual experiments. We hang a
weight by a string over a pulley, attach the other end of the string to
the bob, and notice how far the bob is pulled aside by various weights
hanging at the end of the string. We thus get a numerical law between
the force and the angle which the rod of the pendulum makes with the
vertical. (2) We know how a body will move under a constant force. It
will move in accordance with Table I I, the distance travelled being
proportional to the “square” of the time during which the force acts.
Now we introduce the Newtonian assumption. We know the force in
each position; we know how it would move in that position if the force
on it were constant; actually it is not constant, but we assume that the
motion will be the same as it would be if, in that position, the force
were constant. With that assumption, the general Newtonian rule (of
which the application to velocity is only a special instance) enables us
to sum up the effects of the motions in the different positions, and thus
to arrive at the desired relation between the time and the positions
successively occupied by the pendulum. The whole of the calculation
which plays so large a part in modern science is nothing but an
elaboration of that simple example.

MATHEMATICAL TH EORIES

We have now examined two of the applications of mathematics to

science. Both of them depend on the fact that relations which appeal to
the sense of the mathematician by their neatness and simplicity are found
to be important in the external world of experiment. The relations
between numerals which he suggests are found to occur in numerical
laws, and the assumptions which are suggested by his arguments are
found to be true. We have finally to notice a yet more striking example
of the same fact, and one which is much more difficult to explain to the
layman.
 N U M E RICAL LAWS AN D MATH E MATICS 235

This last application is in formulating theories. . . . A theory, to be

valuable, must have two features. It must be such that laws can be
predicted from it and such that it explains these laws by introducing
some analogy based on laws more familiar than those to be explained. In
recent developments of physics, theories have been developed which
conform to the first of these conditions but not to the second. In place of
the analogy with familiar laws, there appears the new principle of
mathematical simplicity. These theories explain the laws, as do the older
theories, by replacing less acceptable by more acceptable ideas; but the
greater acceptability of the ideas introduced by the theories is not derived
from an analogy with familiar laws, but simply from the strong appeal
they make to the mathematician’s sense of form.
I do not feel confident that I can explain the matter further to those
who have not some knowledge of both physics and mathematics, but I
must try. The laws on the analogy with which theories of the older
type are based were often (in physics, usually) numerical laws, such
laws for example as that of the falling body. Now numerical laws, since
they involve mathematical relations, are usually expressed, not in words,
but in the symbols in which, as every one knows, mathematicians express
their ideas and their arguments. I have been careful to avoid these
symbols; until this page there is hardly an “x” or a “y” in the book.
And I have done so because experience shows that they frighten people;
they make them think that something very difficult is involved. But
really, of course, symbols make things easier; it is conceivable that
some superhuman intellect might be able to study mathematics, and
even to advance it, expressing all his thoughts in words. Actually, the
wonderful symbolism mathematics has invented makes such efforts
unnecessary; [symbols] make the processes of reasoning quite easy to
follow. They are actually inseparable from mathematics; they make
exceedingly difficult arguments easy to follow by means of simple rules
for juggling with these symbols—interchanging their order, replacing
one by another, and so on. The consequence is that the expert
mathematician has a sense about symbols, as symbols; he looks at a
page covered with what, to anyone else, are unintelligible scrawls of
ink, and he immediately realizes whether the argument expressed by
them is such as is likely to satisfy his sense of form; whether the
argument will be “neat” and the results “pretty.” (I can’t tell you what
those terms mean, any more than I can tell you what I mean when I say
that a picture is beautiful.)
Now sometimes, but not always, simple folk can understand what he
236 N. R. Campbell

means; let me try an example. Suppose you found a page with the
following marks on it—never mind if they mean anything:

I think you would see that the set of symbols on the right side are
“prettier” in some sense than those on the left; they are more symmetrical.
Well, the great physicist James Clerk Maxwell, about 1870, thought so
too; and by substituting the symbols on the right side for those on the
left, he founded modern physics, and, among other practical results,
made wireless telegraphy possible.
It sounds incredible; and I must try to explain a little more. The symbols
on the left side represent two well-known electrical laws: Ampère’s Law
and Faraday’s Law; or rather a theory suggested by an analogy with those
laws. The symbols i, j, k represent in those laws an electric current. For

these symbols Maxwell substituted that substitution was

roughly equivalent to saying that an electric current was related to the

things represented by X, Y, Z, t (never mind what they are) in a way
nobody had ever thought of before; it was equivalent to saying that so
long as X, Y, Z, t were related in a certain way, there might be an electric
current in circumstances in which nobody had believed that an electric
current could flow. As a matter of fact, such a current would be one
flowing in an absolutely empty space without any material conductor along
which it might flow, and such a current was previously thought to be
impossible. But Maxwell’s feeling for symbolism suggested to him that there
might be such a current, and when he worked out the consequences of
 N U M E RICAL LAWS AN D MATH E MATICS 237

supposing that there were such currents (not currents perceptible in the
ordinary way, but theoretical currents, as molecules are theoretical hard
particles), he arrived at the unexpected result that an alteration in an
electric current in one place would be reproduced at another far distant
from it by waves travelling from one to the other through absolutely
empty space between. Hertz actually produced and detected such waves;
and Marconi made them a commercial article.
That is the best attempt I can make at explaining the matter. It is one
more illustration of the marvellous power of pure thought, aiming only
at the satisfaction of intellectual desires, to control the external world.
Since Maxwell’s time, there have been many equally wonderful theories,
the form of which is suggested by nothing but the mathematician’s sense
for symbols. The latest are those of Sommerfeld, based [on] the ideas of
Niels Bohr, and of Einstein. Every one has heard of the latter, but the
former (which concerns the constitution of the atom) is quite as marvellous.
But of these I could not give, even if space allowed, even such an explanation
as I have attempted for Maxwell’s. And the reason is this: A theory by
itself means nothing experimental; . . . it is only when something is deduced
from it that it is brought within the range of our material senses. Now in
Maxwell’s theory, the symbols, in the alteration of which the characteristic
feature of the theory depends, are retained through the deduction and
appear in the law which is compared with experiment. Accordingly it is
possible to give some idea of what these symbols mean in terms of things
experimentally observed. But in Sommerfeld’s or Einstein’s theory the
symbols, which are necessarily involved in the assumption which
differentiates their theories from others, disappear during the deduction;
they leave a mark on the other symbols which remain and alter the
relation between them; but the symbols on the relations of which the whole
theory hangs do not appear at all in any law deduced from the theory. It
is quite impossible to give any idea of what they mean in terms of
experiment. 3 Probably some of my readers will have read the very
interesting and ingenious attempts to “explain Einstein” which have
been published, and will feel that they really have a grasp of the matter.
Personally I doubt it; the only way to understand what Einstein did is to
look at the symbols in which his theory must ultimately be expressed and
to realize that it was reasons of symbolic form, and such reasons alone,

3. The same is true really of the exposition of the Newtonian assumption attempted on
p. 233. It is strictly impossible to state exactly what is the assumption discussed there
without using symbols. The acute reader will have guessed already that on that page I
felt myself skating on very thin ice.
238 N. R. Campbell

which led him to arrange the symbols in the way he did and in no other.
But now I have waded into such deep water that it is time to retrace
my steps and return to the safe shore of the affairs of practical life.

The foregoing two selections are Chapters VI & VII

from Campbell’s WHAT IS SCIENCE?
 William Kingdon Clifford
1845–1879

W illiam Kingdon Clifford was born at Exeter, England, in

1845. He studied at King’s College, London, and then at Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he was a brilliant student. He was
elected a fellow of Trinity but gave up the position, in 1871, to
become professor of mathematics at University College, London.
While still a student he began to produce original mathematical
papers, and he later made important contributions to mathematics.
He was primarily a geometer, treating especially the problems of
the new non-Euclidean geometries, but his thought ranged over
all mathematical questions.
He was also much concerned to understand, and to make others
understand, the basic ideas which underlie all science, and he gave
many popular lectures in which he discussed these matters in a lucid,
witty, and eloquent style. Though many eminent nineteenth-century
scientists gave popular lectures—among them Faraday, Helmholtz,
T. H. Huxley, and Tyndall, all of whom are represented in these
volumes—it is possible that Clifford took the task more seriously
than any of them. At any rate, his popular lectures, though they do
not avoid all difficulties, are as entertaining and also enlightening
as those of any of his contemporaries.
Clifford published several books before he died of pulmonary
tuberculosis in Madeira on March 3, 1879, when he was only
35 years old. In the last year or two before his death he was
engaged in writing a book to be called The First Principles of the
Mathematical Sciences Explained to the Non-Mathematical. He did not
have time to finish the work. It was published six years after his
death, edited by Karl Pearson, under the title The Common Sense

239
240 W. K. Clifford

of the Exact Sciences. Clifford chose the new title a few days before
he died.

C lifford’s mathematical interests lay chiefly in geometry, which

underwent disturbing and exciting changes in the nineteenth century.
For more than two thousand years the system perfected by Euclid
had been accepted as a true description of geometric relations in
space. But this position was undermined by the investigations of
several outstanding mathematicians. Among them were Clifford,
Lobachevski, and Riemann.
The Postulates of the Science of Space deals with what Euclid left unsaid.
When Euclid listed his basic premises, he made some assumptions
about space that he did not state. He was probably unaware that he
was making them. Our intuition seems to tell us that all parts of
space are exactly alike, and that space is continuous. But is it “true”?
It is reasonable to suppose that, like most of us, even the mighty
Euclid never thought of asking that question. As a matter of fact, it
is in the very nature of a postulate that we do not ask if it is true. It
is merely some statement that we agree to accept without proof.
The postulates may be any that we please, provided only that they
do not lead to flat contradictions.
In contrast to Bertrand Russell, Clifford does not question the
logic of Euclid’s geometry. But, he suggests, other geometries
deduced from postulates differing from those framed by Euclid—
especially his parallel postulates—are not only logically sound, but
might turn out to be better descriptions of space. Lobachevski
knocked the “eternal truth” out of geometry. Clifford compares him
to Copernicus, who revolutionized astronomy.
The development of several geometries, each consistent within
itself, but each contradictory to all others, offered the makings of a
first-class battle. The battle was fought, and it ended. No one lost—
or won. In a state of coexistence, each has found important
applications in science. One famous example is Einstein’s non-
Euclidean universe, based on Riemann’s geometry.

Notes from the artist: “. . . recalling that Clifford

was described as ‘above all and before all a geometer,’
an early Cubist technique, after the manner of Picasso and Braque,
was used in this portrait of the bearded mathematician.”
242 W. K. Clifford

Does any geometry present a picture of the way things really

are? That, says Clifford, can only be tested by observation. And
our tools for observing are limited. “The geometer of today knows
nothing about the nature of actually existing space at an infinite
distance; he knows nothing about the properties of this present space
in a past or future eternity.”
Clifford’s writings in science, mathematics, and philosophy are
both profound and clear. In The Postulates of the Science of Space his gift
for making difficult ideas understandable is applied to that most
delicate task—examining what we have always taken for granted.
 The Postulates
of the Science of Space

n my first lecture I said that, out of the pictures which are all that
we can really see, we imagine a world of solid things; and that this
world is constructed so as to fulfil a certain code of rules, some called
axioms, and some called definitions, and some called postulates, and
some assumed in the course of demonstration, but all laid down in one
form or another in Euclid’s Elements of Geometry. It is this code of rules
that we have to consider to-day. I do not, however, propose to take this
book that I have mentioned, and to examine one after another the rules
as Euclid has laid them down or unconsciously assumed them;
notwithstanding that many things might be said in favour of such a
course. This book has been for nearly twenty-two centuries the
encouragement and guide of that scientific thought which is one thing
with the progress of man from a worse to a better state. The
encouragement; for it contained a body of knowledge that was really
known and could be relied on, and that moreover was growing in extent
and application. For even at the time this book was written—shortly
after the foundation of the Alexandrian Museum—Mathematic was no
longer the merely ideal science of the Platonic school, but had started
on her career of conquest over the whole world of Phenomena. The
guide; for the aim of every scientific student of every subject was to
bring his knowledge of that subject into a form as perfect as that which
geometry had attained. Far up on the great mountain of Truth, which
all the sciences hope to scale, the foremost of that sacred sisterhood
was seen, beckoning to the rest to follow her. And hence she was called,
in the dialect of the Pythagoreans, “the purifier of the reasonable soul.”
Being thus in itself at once the inspiration and the aspiration of
scientific thought, this book of Euclid’s has had a history as chequered
as that of human progress itself. It embodied and systematized the
truest results of the search after truth that was made by Greek,

243
244 W. K. Clifford

Egyptian, and Hindu. It presided for nearly eight centuries over that
promise of light and right that was made by the civilized Aryan races on
the Mediterranean shores; that promise, whose abeyance for nearly as
long an interval is so full of warning and of sadness for ourselves. It went
into exile along with the intellectual activity and the goodness of Europe.
It was taught, and commented upon, and illustrated, and supplemented,
by Arab and Nestorian, in the Universities of Bagdad and of Cordova.
From these it was brought back into barbaric Europe by terrified students
who dared tell hardly any other thing of what they had learned among
the Saracens. Translated from Arabic into Latin, it passed into the schools
of Europe, spun out with additional cases for every possible variation of
the figure, and bristling with words which had sounded to Greek ears
like the babbling of birds in a hedge. At length the Greek text appeared
and was translated; and, like other Greek authors, Euclid became an
authority. There had not yet arisen in Europe “that fruitful faculty,” as
Mr. Winwood Reade calls it, “with which kindred spirits contemplate
each other’s works; which not only takes, but gives; which produces from
whatever it receives; which embraces to wrestle, and wrestles to embrace.”
Yet it was coming; and though that criticism of first principles which
Aristotle and Ptolemy and Galen underwent waited longer in Euclid’s
case than in theirs, it came for him at last. What Vesalius was to Galen,
what Copernicus was to Ptolemy, that was Lobachevski to Euclid. There
is, indeed, a somewhat instructive parallel between the last two cases.
Copernicus and Lobachevski were both of Slavic origin. Each of them
has brought about a revolution in scientific ideas so great that it can only
be compared with that wrought by the other. And the reason of the
transcendent importance of these two changes is that they are changes in
the conception of the Cosmos. Before the time of Copernicus, men knew all
about the Universe. They could tell you in the schools, pat off by heart, all
that it was, and what it had been, and what it would be. There was the flat
earth, with the blue vault of heaven resting on it like the dome of a cathedral,
and the bright cold stars stuck into it; while the sun and planets moved in
crystal spheres between. Or, among the better informed, the earth was a
globe in the centre of the universe, heaven a sphere concentric with it;
intermediate machinery as before. At any rate, if there was anything beyond
heaven, it was a void space that needed no further description. The history
of all this could be traced back to a certain definite time, when it began;
behind that was a changeless eternity that needed no further history. Its
future could be predicted in general terms as far forward as a certain epoch,
about the precise determination of which there were, indeed, differences
 TH E POSTU LATE S OF TH E SCI E NCE OF S PACE 245

among the learned. But after that would come again a changeless eternity,
which was fully accounted for and described. But in any case the Universe
was a known thing. Now the enormous effect of the Copernican system,
and of the astronomical discoveries that have followed it, is that, in place
of this knowledge of a little, which was called knowledge of the Universe,
of Eternity and Immensity, we have now got knowledge of a great deal
more; but we only call it the knowledge of Here and Now. We can tell a
great deal about the solar system; but, after all, it is our house, and not the
city. We can tell something about the star-system to which our sun belongs;
but, after all, it is our star-system, and not the Universe. We are talking
about Here with the consciousness of a There beyond it, which we may
know some time, but do not at all know now. And though the nebular
hypothesis tells us a great deal about the history of the solar system, and
traces it back for a period compared with which the old measure of the
duration of the Universe from beginning to end is not a second to a
century, yet we do not call this the history of eternity. We may put it all
together and call it Now, with the consciousness of a Then before it, in
which things were happening that may have left records; but we have not
yet read them. This, then, was the change effected by Copernicus in the
idea of the Universe. But there was left another to be made. For the laws
of space and motion, that we are presently going to examine, implied an
infinite space and an infinite duration, about whose properties as space
and time everything was accurately known. The very constitution of those
parts of it which are at an infinite distance from us, “geometry upon the
plane at infinity,” is just as well known, if the Euclidean assumptions are
true, as the geometry of any portion of this room. In this infinite and
thoroughly well-known space the Universe is situated during at least some
portion of an infinite and thoroughly well-known time. So that here we
have real knowledge of something at least that concerns the Cosmos;
something that is true throughout the Immensities and the Eternities.
That something Lobachevski and his successors have taken away. The
geometer of to-day knows nothing about the nature of actually existing
space at an infinite distance; he knows nothing about the properties of this
present space in a past or a future eternity. He knows, indeed, that the laws
assumed by Euclid are true with an accuracy that no direct experiment can
approach, not only in this place where we are, but in places at a distance
from us that no astronomer has conceived; but he knows this as of Here and
Now; beyond his range is a There and Then of which he knows nothing at
present, but may ultimately come to know more. So, you see, there is a real
parallel between the work of Copernicus and his successors on the
246 W. K. Clifford

one hand, and the work of Lobachevski and his successors on the other.
In both of these the knowledge of Immensity and Eternity is replaced by
knowledge of Here and Now. And in virtue of these two revolutions the
idea of the Universe, the Macrocosm, the All, as subject of human
knowledge, and therefore of human interest, has fallen to pieces.
It will now, I think, be clear to you why it will not do to take for our
present consideration the postulates of geometry as Euclid has laid them
down. While they were all certainly true, there might be substituted for
them some other group of equivalent propositions; and the choice of the
particular set of statements that should be used as the groundwork of the
science was to a certain extent arbitrary, being only guided by convenience
of exposition. But from the moment that the actual truth of these
assumptions becomes doubtful, they fall of themselves into a necessary
order and classification; for we then begin to see which of them may be
true independently of the others. And for the purpose of criticizing the
evidence for them, it is essential that this natural order should be taken;
for I think you will see presently that any other order would bring
hopeless confusion into the discussion.
Space is divided into parts in many ways. If we consider any material
thing, space is at once divided into the part where that thing is and the
part where it is not. The water in this glass, for example, makes a
distinction between the space where it is and the space where it is not.
Now, in order to get from one of these to the other you must cross the
surface of the water; this surface is the boundary of the space where the
water is which separates it from the space where it is not. Every thing,
considered as occupying a portion of space, has a surface which separates
the space where it is from the space where it is not. But, again, a surface
may be divided into parts in various ways. Part of the surface of this
water is against the air, and part is against the glass. If you travel over
the surface from one of these parts to the other, you have to cross the line
which divides them; it is this circular edge where water, air, and glass
meet. Every part of a surface is separated from the other parts by a line
which bounds it. But now suppose, further, that this glass had been so
constructed that the part towards you was blue and the part towards me
was white, as it is now. Then this line, dividing two parts of the surface
of the water, would itself be divided into two parts; there would be a
part where it was against the blue glass, and a part where it was against the
white glass. If you travel in thought along that line, so as to get from one
of these two parts to the other, you have to cross a point which separates
them, and is the boundary between them. Every part of a line is separated
 TH E POSTU LATE S OF TH E SCI E NCE OF S PACE 247

from the other parts by points which bound it. So we may say alto-
gether—
The boundary of a solid (i.e., of a part of space) is a surface.
The boundary of a part of a surface is a line.
The boundaries of a part of a line are points.
And we are only settling the meanings in which words are to be
used. But here we may make an observation which is true of all space
that we are acquainted with: it is that the process ends here. There are
no parts of a point which are separated from one another by the next link
in the series. This is also indicated by the reverse process.
For I shall now suppose this point—the last thing that we got to—to
move round the tumbler so as to trace out the line, or edge, where air,
water, and glass meet. In this way I get a series of points, one after
another; a series of such a nature that, starting from any one of them,
only two changes are possible that will keep it within the series: it must
go forwards or it must go backwards, and each of these is perfectly
definite. The line may then be regarded as an aggregate of points. Now
let us imagine, further, a change to take place in this line, which is
nearly a circle. Let us suppose it to contract towards the centre of the
circle, until it becomes indefinitely small, and disappears. In so doing it
will trace out the upper surface of the water, the part of the surface
where it is in contact with the air. In this way we shall get a series of
circles one after another—a series of such a nature that, starting from any
one of them, only two changes are possible that will keep it within the
series: it must expand or it must contract. This series, therefore, of circles,
is just similar to the series of points that make one circle; and just as the
line is regarded as an aggregate of points, so we may regard this surface
as an aggregate of lines. But this surface is also in another sense an
aggregate of points, in being an aggregate of aggregates of points. But,
starting from a point in the surface, more than two changes are possible
that will keep it within the surface, for it may move in any direction.
The surface, then, is an aggregate of points of a different kind from the
line. We speak of the line as a point-aggregate of one dimension, because,
starting from one point, there are only two possible directions of change;
so that the line can be traced out in one motion. In the same way, a
surface is a line-aggregate of one dimension, because it can be traced out
by one motion of the line; but it is a point-aggregate of two dimensions,
because, in order to build it up of points, we have first to aggregate
points into a line, and then lines into a surface. It requires two motions
of a point to trace it out.
248 W. K. Clifford

Lastly, let us suppose this upper surface of the water to move

downwards, remaining always horizontal till it becomes the under surface.
In so doing it will trace out the part of space occupied by the water. We
shall thus get a series of surfaces one after another, precisely analogous
to the series of points which make a line, and the series of lines which
make a surface. The piece of solid space is an aggregate of surfaces, and
an aggregate of the same kind as the line is of points; it is a surface-
aggregate of one dimension. But at the same time it is a line-aggregate of
two dimensions, and a point-aggregate of three dimensions. For if you
consider a particular line which has gone to make this solid, a circle
partly contracted and part of the way down, there are more than two
opposite changes which it can undergo. For it can ascend or descend, or
expand or contract, or do both together in any proportion. It has just as
great a variety of changes as a point in a surface. And the piece of space
is called a point-aggregate of three dimensions, because it takes three
distinct motions to get it from a point. We must first aggregate points
into a line, then lines into a surface, then surfaces into a solid.
At this step it is clear, again, that the process must stop in all the space
we know of. For it is not possible to move that piece of space in such a
way as to change every point in it. When we moved our line or our
surface, the new line or surface contained no point whatever that was in
the old one; we started with one aggregate of points, and by moving it
we got an entirely new aggregate, all the points of which were new. But
this cannot be done with the solid; so that the process is at an end. We
arrive, then, at the result that space is of three dimensions.
Is this, then, one of the postulates of the science of space? No; it is
not. The science of space, as we have it, deals with relations of distance
existing in a certain space of three dimensions, but it does not at all
require us to assume that no relations of distance are possible in aggregates
of more than three dimensions. The fact that there are only three
dimensions does regulate the number of books that we write, and the parts
of the subject that we study: but it is not itself a postulate of the science.
We investigate a certain space of three dimensions, on the hypothesis
that it has certain elementary properties; and it is the assumptions of
these elementary properties that are the real postulates of the science of
space. To these I now proceed.
The first of them is concerned with points, and with the relation of
space to them. We spoke of a line as an aggregate of points. Now there
are two kinds of aggregates, which are called respectively continuous
and discrete. If you consider this line, the boundary of part of the surface of
 TH E POSTU LATE S OF TH E SCI E NCE OF S PACE 249

the water, you will find yourself believing that between any two points
of it you can put more points of division, and between any two of these
more again, and so on; and you do not believe there can be any end to
the process. We may express that by saying you believe that between any
two points of the line there is an infinite number of other points. But
now here is an aggregate of marbles, which, regarded as an aggregate,
has many characters of resemblance with the aggregate of points. It is a
series of marbles, one after another; and if we take into account the
relations of nextness or contiguity which they possess, then there are
only two changes possible from one of them as we travel along the series:
we must go to the next in front, or to the next behind. But yet it is not
true that between any two of them here is an infinite number of other
marbles; between these two, for example, there are only three. There,
then, is a distinction at once between the two kinds of aggregates. But
there is another, which was pointed out by Aristotle in his Physics and
made the basis of a definition of continuity. I have here a row of two
different kinds of marbles, some white and some black. This aggregate
is divided into two parts, as we formerly supposed the line to be. In the
case of the line the boundary between the two parts is a point which is the
element of which the line is an aggregate. In this case before us, a marble
is the element; but here we cannot say that the boundary between the two
parts is a marble. The boundary of the white parts is a white marble, and
the boundary of the black parts is a black marble; these two adjacent parts
have different boundaries. Similarly, if instead of arranging my marbles
in a series, I spread them out on a surface, I may have this aggregate
divided into two portions—a white portion and a black portion; but the
boundary of the white portion is a row of white marbles, and the boundary
of the black portion is a row of black marbles. And lastly, if I made a heap
of white marbles, and put black marbles on the top of them, I should have
a discrete aggregate of three dimensions divided into two parts: the
boundary of the white part would be a layer of white marbles, and the
boundary of the black part would be a layer of black marbles. In all these
cases of discrete aggregates, when they are divided into two parts, the two
adjacent parts have different boundaries. But if you come to consider an
aggregate that you believe to be continuous, you will see that you think of
two adjacent parts as having the same boundary. What is the boundary
between water and air here? Is it water? No; for there would still have to
be a boundary to divide that water from the air. For the same reason it
cannot be air. I do not want you at present to think of the actual physical
facts by the aid of any molecular theories; I want you only to think of
250 W. K. Clifford

what appears to be, in order to understand clearly a conception that we

all have. Suppose the things actually in contact. If, however much we
magnified them, they still appeared to be thoroughly homogeneous, the
water filling up a certain space, the air an adjacent space; if this held
good indefinitely through all degrees of conceivable magnifying, then
we could not say that the surface of the water was a layer of water and
the surface of air a layer of air; we should have to say that the same
surface was the surface of both of them, and was itself neither one nor
the other—that this surface occupied no space at all. Accordingly, Aristotle
defined the continuous as that of which two adjacent parts have the
same boundary; and the discontinuous or discrete as that of which two
adjacent parts have direct boundaries.
Now the first postulate of the science of space is that space is a
continuous aggregate of points, and not a discrete aggregate. And this
postulate—which I shall call the postulate of continuity—is really involved
in those three of the six postulates of Euclid for which Robert Simson
has retained the name of postulate. You will see, on a little reflection,
that a discrete aggregate of points could not be so arranged that any two
of them should be relatively situated to one another in exactly the same
manner, so that any two points might be joined by a straight line which
should always bear the same definite relation to them. And the same
difficulty occurs in regard to the other two postulates. But perhaps the
most conclusive way of showing that this postulate is really assumed by
Euclid is to adduce the proposition he proves, that every finite straight
line may be bisected. Now this could not be the case if it consisted of an
odd number of separate points. As the first of the postulates of the science
of space, then, we must reckon this postulate of Continuity; according
to which two adjacent portions of space, or of a surface, or of a line, have
the same boundary, viz., a surface, a line, or a point; and between every
two points on a line there is an infinite number of intermediate points.
The next postulate is that of Elementary Flatness. You know that if
you get hold of a small piece of a very large circle, it seems to you nearly
straight. So, if you were to take any curved line, and magnify it very
much, confining your attention to a small piece of it, that piece would
seem straighter to you than the curve did before it was magnified. At
least, you can easily conceive a curve possessing this property, that the
more you magnify it, the straighter it gets. Such a curve would possess
the property of elementary flatness. In the same way, if you perceive a
portion of the surface of a very large sphere, such as the earth, it appears
to you to be flat. If, then, you take a sphere of say a foot diameter, and
magnify it more and more, you will find that the more you magnify it the
 TH E POSTU LATE S OF TH E SCI E NCE OF S PACE 251

flatter it gets. And you may easily suppose that this process would go on
indefinitely; that the curvature would become less and less the more the
surface was magnified. Any curved surface which is such that the more
you magnify it the flatter it gets, is said to possess the property of elementary
flatness. But if every succeeding power of our imaginary microscope
disclosed new wrinkles and inequalities without end, then we should say
that the surface did not possess the property of elementary flatness.
But how am I to explain how solid space can have this property of
elementary flatness? Shall I leave it as a mere analogy, and say that it is
the same kind of property as this of the curve and surface, only in three
dimensions instead of one or two? I think I can get a little nearer to it
than that; at all events I will try.
If we start to go out from a point on a surface, there is a certain choice
of directions in which we may go. These directions make certain angles
with one another. We may suppose a certain direction to start with, and
then gradually alter that by turning it round the point: we find thus a
single series of directions in which we may start from the point. According
to our first postulate, it is a continuous series of directions. Now when I
speak of a direction from the point, I mean a direction of starting; I say
nothing about the subsequent path. Two different paths may have the
same direction at starting; in this case they will touch at the point; and
there is an obvious difference between two paths which touch and two
paths which meet and form an angle. Here, then, is an aggregate of
directions, and they can be changed into one another. Moreover, the
changes by which they pass into one another have magnitude, they
constitute distance-relations; and the amount of change necessary to turn
one of them into another is called the angle between them. It is involved
in this postulate that we are considering, that angles can be compared in
respect of magnitude. But this is not all. If we go on changing a direction
of start, it will, after a certain amount of turning, come round into itself
again, and be the same direction. On every surface which has the property
of elementary flatness, the amount of turning necessary to take a direction
all round into its first position is the same for all points of the surface. I
will now show you a surface which at one point of it has not this property.
I take this circle of paper from which a sector has been cut out, and bend
it round so as to join the edges; in this way I form a surface which is called
a cone. Now on all points of this surface but one, the law of elementary
flatness holds good. At the vertex of the cone, however, notwithstanding
that there is an aggregate of directions in which you may start, such that
by continuously changing one of them you may get it round into its original
position, yet the whole amount of change necessary to effect this is
252 W. K. Clifford

not the same at the vertex as it is at any other point of the surface. And
this you can see at once when I unroll it; for only part of the directions
in the plane have been included in the cone. At this point of the cone,
then, it does not possess the property of elementary flatness; and no
amount of magnifying would ever make a cone seem flat at its vertex.
To apply this to solid space, we must notice that here also there is a
choice of directions in which you may go out from any point; but it is a
much greater choice than a surface gives you. Whereas in a surface the
aggregate of directions is only of one dimension, in solid space it is of
two dimensions. But here also there are distance-relations, and the
aggregate of directions may be divided into parts which have quantity.
For example, the directions which start from the vertex of this cone are
divided into those which go inside the cone, and those which go outside
the cone. The part of the aggregate which is inside the cone is called a
solid angle. Now in those spaces of three dimensions which have the
property of elementary flatness, the whole amount of solid angle round
one point is equal to the whole amount round another point. Although
the space need not be exactly similar to itself in all parts, yet the aggregate
of directions round one point is exactly similar to the aggregate of
directions round another point, if the space has the property of elementary
flatness.
How does Euclid assume this postulate of Elementary Flatness? In
his fourth postulate he has expressed it so simply and clearly that you
will wonder how anybody could make all this fuss. He says, “All right
angles are equal.”
Why could I not have adopted this at once, and saved a great deal of
trouble? Because it assumes the knowledge of a surface possessing the
property of elementary flatness in all its points. Unless such a surface is
first made out to exist, and the definition of a right angle is restricted to
lines drawn upon it—for there is no necessity for the word straight in that
definition—the postulate in Euclid’s form is obviously not true. I can
make two lines cross at the vertex of a cone so that the four adjacent
angles shall be equal, and yet not one of them equal to a right angle.
I pass on to the third postulate of the science of space—the postulate of
Superposition. According to this postulate a body can be moved about in
space without altering its size or shape. This seems obvious enough, but it
is worth while to examine a little closely into the meaning of it. We must
define what we mean by size and by shape. When we say that a body can
be moved about without altering its size, we mean that it can be so moved
as to keep unaltered the length of all the lines in it. This postulate there-
 TH E POSTU LATE S OF TH E SCI E NCE OF S PACE 253

fore involves that lines can be compared in respect of magnitude, or that

they have a length independent of position; precisely as the former one
involved the comparison of angular magnitudes. And when we say that
a body can be moved about without altering its shape, we mean that it
can be so moved as to keep unaltered all the angles in it. It is not necessary
to make mention of the motion of a body, although that is the easiest
way of expressing and of conceiving this postulate; but we may, if we
like, express it entirely in terms which belong to space, and that we
should do in this way. Suppose a figure to have been constructed in
some portion of space; say that a triangle has been drawn whose sides are
the shortest distances between its angular points. Then if in any other
portion of space two points are taken whose shortest distance is equal to
a side of the triangle, and at one of them an angle is made equal to one
of the angles adjacent to that side, and a line of shortest distance drawn
equal to the corresponding side of the original triangle, the distance
from the extremity of this to the other of the two points will be equal to
the third side of the original triangle, and the two will be equal in all
respects; or generally, if a figure has been constructed anywhere, another
figure, with all its lines and all its angles equal to the corresponding
lines and angles of the first, can be constructed anywhere else. Now this
is exactly what is meant by the principle of superposition employed by
Euclid to prove the proposition that I have just mentioned. And we may
state it again in this short form—all parts of space are exactly alike.
But this postulate carries with it a most important consequence. It
enables us to make a pair of most fundamental definitions—those of the
plane and of the straight line. In order to explain how these come out of
it when it is granted, and how they cannot be made when it is not
granted, I must here say something more about the nature of the postulate
itself, which might otherwise have been left until we come to criticize it.
We have stated the postulate as referring to solid space. But a similar
property may exist in surfaces. Here, for instance, is part of the surface
of a sphere. If I draw any figure I like upon this, I can suppose it to be
moved about in any way upon the sphere, without alteration of its size
or shape. If a figure has been drawn on any part of the surface of a
sphere, a figure equal to it in all respects may be drawn on any other part
of the surface. Now I say that this property belongs to the surface itself, is
a part of its own internal economy, and does not depend in any way upon
its relation to space of three dimensions. For I can pull it about and bend
it in all manner of ways, so as altogether to alter its relation to solid space;
and yet, if I do not stretch it or tear it, I make no difference whatever in
254 W. K. Clifford

the length of any lines upon it, or in the size of any angles upon it. 1 I do
not in any way alter the figures drawn upon it, or the possibility of
drawing figures upon it, so far as their relations with the surface itself are
concerned. This property of the surface, then, could be ascertained by
people who lived entirely in it, and were absolutely ignorant of a third
dimension. As a point-aggregate of two dimensions, it has in itself
properties determining the distance-relations of the points upon it, which
are absolutely independent of the existence of any points which are not
upon it.
Now here is a surface which has not that property. You observe that it
is not of the same shape all over, and that some parts of it are more
curved than other parts. If you drew a figure upon this surface, and
then tried to move it about, you would find that it was impossible to do
so without altering the size and shape of the figure. Some parts of it
would have to expand, some to contract, the lengths of the lines could
not all be kept the same, the angles would not hit off together. And this
property of the surface—that its parts are different from one another—is a
property of the surface itself, a part of its internal economy, absolutely
independent of any relations it may have with space outside of it. For, as
with the other one, I can pull it about in all sorts of ways, and, so long
as I do not stretch it or tear it, I make no alteration in the length of lines
drawn upon it or in the size of the angles.
Here, then, is an intrinsic difference between these two surfaces, as
surfaces. They are both point-aggregates of two dimensions; but the points
in them have certain relations of distance (distance measured always on
the surface), and these relations of distance are not the same in one case
as they are in the other.
The supposed people living in the surface and having no idea of a
third dimension might, without suspecting that third dimension at all,
make a very accurate determination of the nature of their locus in quo. If the
people who lived on the surface of the sphere were to measure the angles
of a triangle, they would find them to exceed two right angles by a quantity
proportional to the area of the triangle. This excess of the angles above
two right angles, being divided by the area of the triangle, would be
found to give exactly the same quotient at all parts of the sphere. That
1. This figure was made of linen, starched upon a spherical surface, and taken off when
dry. That mentioned in the next paragraph was similarly stretched upon the irregular
surface of the head of a bust. For durability these models should be made of two
thicknesses of linen starched together in such a way that the fibres of one bisect the
angles between the fibres of the other, and the edge should be bound by a thin slip of
paper. They will then retain their curvature unaltered for a long time.
 TH E POSTU LATE S OF TH E SCI E NCE OF S PACE 255

quotient is called the curvature of the surface; and we say that a sphere
is a surface of uniform curvature. But if the people living on this irregular
surface were to do the same thing, they would not find quite the same
result. The sum of the angles would, indeed, differ from two right angles,
but sometimes in excess, and sometimes in defect, according to the part
of the surface where they were. And though for small triangles in any
one neighbourhood the excess or defect would be nearly proportional to
the area of the triangle, yet the quotient obtained by dividing this excess
or defect by the area of the triangle would vary from one part of the
surface to another. In other words, the curvature of this surface varies
from point to point; it is sometimes positive, sometimes negative,
sometimes nothing at all.
But now comes the important difference. When I speak of a triangle,
what do I suppose the sides of that triangle to be?
If I take two points near enough together upon a surface, and stretch
a string between them, that string will take up a certain definite position
upon the surface, marking the line of shortest distance from one point to
the other. Such a line is called a geodesic line. It is a line determined by
the intrinsic properties of the surface, and not by its relations with external
space. The line would still be the shortest line, however the surface
were pulled about without stretching or tearing. A geodesic line may be
produced, when a piece of it is given; for we may take one of the points,
and, keeping the string stretched, make it go round in a sort of circle
until the other end has turned through two right angles. The new position
will then be a prolongation of the same geodesic line.
In speaking of a triangle, then, I meant a triangle whose sides are
geodesic lines. But in the case of a spherical surface—or, more generally,
of a surface of constant curvature—these geodesic lines have another and
most important property. They are straight, so far as the surface is
concerned. On this surface a figure may be moved about without altering
its size or shape. It is possible, therefore, to draw a line which shall be of
the same shape all along and on both sides. That is to say, if you take a
piece of the surface on one side of such a line, you may slide it all along
the line and it will fit; and you may turn it round and apply it to the
other side, and it will fit there also. This is Leibnitz’s definition of a
straight line, and, you see, it has no meaning except in the case of a
surface of constant curvature, a surface all parts of which are alike.
Now let us consider the corresponding things in solid space. In this
also we may have geodesic lines; namely, lines formed by stretching a
string between two points. But we may also have geodesic surfaces; and
256 W. K. Clifford

they are produced in this manner. Suppose we have a point on a surface,

and this surface possesses the property of elementary flatness. Then among
all the directions of starting from the point, there are some which start in
the surface, and do not make an angle with it. Let all these be prolonged
into geodesics; then we may imagine one of these geodesics to travel
round and coincide with all the others in turn. In so doing it will trace
out a surface which is called a geodesic surface. Now in the particular
case where a space of three dimensions has the property of superposition,
or is all over alike, these geodesic surfaces are planes. That is to say, since
the space is all over alike, these surfaces are also of the same shape all
over and on both sides; which is Leibnitz’s definition of a plane. If you
take a piece of space on one side of such a plane, partly bounded by the
plane, you may slide it all over the plane, and it will fit; and you may
turn it round and apply it to the other side, and it will fit there also.
Now it is clear that this definition will have no meaning unless the
third postulate be granted. So we may say that when the postulate of
Superposition is true, then there are planes and straight lines; and they
are defined as being of the same shape throughout and on both sides.
It is found that the whole geometry of a space of three dimensions is
known when we know the curvature of three geodesic surfaces at every
point. The third postulate requires that the curvature of all geodesic
surfaces should be everywhere equal to the same quantity.
I pass to the fourth postulate, which I call the postulate of Similarity.
According to this postulate, any figure may be magnified or diminished
in any degree without altering its shape. If any figure has been constructed
in one part of space, it may be reconstructed to any scale whatever in
any other part of space, so that no one of the angles shall be altered
though all the lengths of lines will of course be altered. This seems to be
a sufficiently obvious induction from experience; for we have all
frequently seen different sizes of the same shape; and it has the advantage
of embodying the fifth and sixth of Euclid’s postulates in a single
principle, which bears a great resemblance in form to that of
Superposition, and may be used in the same manner. It is easy to show
that it involves the two postulates of Euclid: “Two straight lines cannot
enclose a space,” and “Lines in one plane which never meet make equal
angles with every other line.”
This fourth postulate is equivalent to the assumption that the constant
curvature of the geodesic surfaces is zero; or the third and fourth may be
put together, and we shall then say that the three curvatures of space are
all of them zero at every point.
 TH E POSTU LATE S OF TH E SCI E NCE OF S PACE 257

The supposition made by Lobachevski was that the three first postulates
were true, but not the fourth. Of the two Euclidean postulates included
in this, he admitted one, viz., that two straight lines cannot enclose a
space, or that two lines which once diverge go on diverging for ever. But
he left out the postulate about parallels, which may be stated in this form.
If through a point outside of a straight line there be drawn another,
indefinitely produced both ways; and if we turn this second one round so
as to make the point of intersection travel along the first line, then at the
very instant that this point of intersection disappears at one end it will
reappear at the other, and there is only one position in which the lines do
not intersect. Lobachevski supposed, instead, that there was a finite angle
through which the second line must be turned after the point of intersection
had disappeared at one end, before it reappeared at the other. For all
positions of the second line within this angle there is then no intersection.
In the two limiting positions, when the lines have just done meeting at
one end, and when they are just going to meet at the other, they are called
parallel; so that two lines can be drawn through a fixed point parallel to a
given straight line. The angle between these two depends in a certain way
upon the distance of the point from the line. The sum of the angles of a
triangle is less than two right angles by a quantity proportional to the area
of the triangle. The whole of this geometry is worked out in the style of
Euclid, and the most interesting conclusions are arrived at; particularly
in the theory of solid space, in which a surface turns up which is not
plane relatively to that space, but which, for purposes of drawing figures
upon it, is identical with the Euclidean plane.
It was Riemann, however, who first accomplished the task of analysing
all the assumptions of geometry, and showing which of them were
independent. This very disentangling and separation of them is sufficient
to deprive them for the geometer of their exactness and necessity; for the
process by which it is effected consists in showing the possibility of
conceiving these suppositions one by one to be untrue; whereby it is
clearly made out how much is supposed. But it may be worth while to
state formally the case for and against them.
When it is maintained that we know these postulates to be universally
true, in virtue of certain deliverances of our consciousness, it is implied
that these deliverances could not exist, except upon the supposition that
the postulates are true. If it can be shown, then, from experience that
our consciousness would tell us exactly the same things if the postulates
are not true, the ground of their validity will be taken away. But this is
a very easy thing to show.
258 W. K. Clifford

That same faculty which tells you that space is continuous tells you
that this water is continuous, and that the motion perceived in a wheel
of life is continuous. Now we happen to know that if we could magnify
this water as much again as the best microscopes can magnify it, we
should perceive its granular structure. And what happens in a wheel of
life is discovered by stopping the machine. Even apart, then, from our
knowledge of the way nerves act in carrying messages, it appears that we
have no means of knowing anything more about an aggregate than that
it is too fine grained for us to perceive its discontinuity, if it has any.
Nor can we, in general, receive a conception as positive knowledge
which is itself founded merely upon inaction. For the conception of a
continuous thing is of that which looks just the same however much
you magnify it. We may conceive the magnifying to go on to a certain
extent without change, and then, as it were, leave it going on, without
taking the trouble to doubt about the changes that may ensue.
In regard to the second postulate, we have merely to point to the
example of polished surfaces. The smoothest surface that can be made is
the one most completely covered with the minutest ruts and furrows. Yet
geometrical constructions can be made with extreme accuracy upon such
a surface, on the supposition that it is an exact plane. If, therefore, the
sharp points, edges, and furrows of space are only small enough, there
will be nothing to hinder our conviction of its elementary flatness. It
has even been remarked by Riemann that we must not shrink from this
supposition if it is found useful in explaining physical phenomena.
The first two postulates may therefore be doubted on the side of the
very small. We may put the third and fourth together, and doubt them
on the side of the very great. For if the property of elementary flatness
exist on the average, the deviations from it being, as we have supposed,
too small to be perceived, then, whatever were the true nature of space,
we should have exactly the conceptions of it which we now have, if
only the regions we can get at were small in comparison with the areas
of curvature. If we suppose the curvature to vary in an irregular manner,
the effect of it might be very considerable in a triangle formed by the
nearest fixed stars; but if we suppose it approximately uniform to the
limit of telescopic reach, it will be restricted to very much narrower
limits. I cannot perhaps do better than conclude by describing to you as
well as I can what is the nature of things on the supposition that the
curvature of all space is nearly uniform and positive.
In this case the Universe, as known, becomes again a valid conception;
 TH E POSTU LATE S OF TH E SCI E NCE OF S PACE 259

for the extent of space is a finite number of cubic miles.2 And this comes
about in a curious way. If you were to start in any direction whatever,
and move in that direction in a perfect straight line according to the
definition of Leibnitz; after travelling a most prodigious distance, to
which the parallactic unit—200,000 times the diameter of the earth’s
orbit—would be only a few steps, you would arrive at—this place. Only,
if you had started upwards, you would appear from below. Now, one of
two things would be true. Either, when you had got half-way on your
journey, you came to a place that is opposite to this, and which you must
have gone through, whatever direction you started in; or else all paths
you could have taken diverge entirely from each other till they meet
again at this place. In the former case, every two straight lines in a plane
meet in two points, in the latter they meet only in one. Upon this
supposition of a positive curvature, the whole of geometry is far more
complete and interesting; the principle of duality, instead of half breaking
down over metric relations, applies to all propositions without exception.
In fact, I do not mind confessing that I personally have often found
relief from the dreary infinities of homaloidal space in the consoling
hope that, after all, this other may be the true state of things.

2. The assumptions here made about the Zusammenhang [continuity] of space are the
simplest ones, but even the finite extent does not follow necessarily from uniform
positive curvature, as Riemann seems to have supposed.
 Henri Poincaré
1854–1912

J ules Henri Poincaré, the son of a physician, and a cousin of the

President of France during World War I, was born at Nancy, France,
in 1854. He studied at the École Polytechnique and at the School of
Mines. After receiving a degree in mathematical sciences in 1879
from the University of Paris, he lectured for two years at Caen. He
became maître de conférence in mathematical analysis at the University
of Paris in 1881, and in 1886 he was promoted to professor of
mathematical physics and the calculus of probabilities.
Henri Poincaré, the greatest mathematician of his time, conformed
to the popular idea of a mathematical genius. Timid, frail, and
precocious, he spent his childhood in a scholarly household that
was frequented by philosophers and scientists. He early displayed
a remarkable mathematical aptitude, but he drew geometrical
diagrams so badly that he failed the drawing test in the entrance
examinations for the École Polytechnique. In maturity, he was short,
stooped, near-sighted, and absent-minded. Although he claimed that
his memory was not good enough to make him a good chess player,
it was fabulous in matters of great complexity.
His contribution to scientific writing is enormous. He wrote more
than thirty books on mathematical physics and astronomy, nearly
five hundred memoirs on mathematics, two books of popular essays,

Notes from the artist: “The portrait of Poincaré is placed

against a semiabstract background showing the execution of some
of his equations and formulas. The quotation from On Measuring Time
reflects Poincaré’s thoughts about rhythm and duration.”

260
262 Henri Poincaré

and three books on the philosophy of science. His work falls into
three main divisions: pure mathematics, astronomy, and physics.
His most important work is in pure analytical mathematics.
Poincaré won many honors and prizes and was elected to
membership in the most distinguished scientific bodies, being
appointed to the Academy of Science at the early age of thirty-two.
The literary quality of his popular and philosophical essays was
recognized by the French Academy. Because of the breadth of his
mathematical knowledge he has been called the “last universalist.”
He died at Paris on July 17, 1912.

A mong the great creative mathematicians, Poincaré is noted for

his philosophical breadth and lucid style. In Science and Hypothesis
and Science and Method, from which the present selections are taken,
the most technical and difficult topics are brought within the reach
of the intelligent nonmathematical reader—or almost. Poincaré’s
intuitive power was immense. His insights, you will find, come fast
and thick, and it would be ungrateful to complain if you do not
understand every one. If your rich uncle writes you a check for an
amount greater than you can handle at the moment, you simply put
the balance aside for another day.
The first two selections present Poincaré’s original ideas about
the relation of geometry, on the one hand, and physical space and
physics, on the other. It had been noted for centuries that Euclid’s
fifth axiom was not self-evident and could not be proved. This was
regarded as an unfortunate flaw, but it led in the nineteenth century
to a very important generalization of geometry. Bolyai, Lobachevski,
and Riemann developed non-Euclidian geometry, of which Euclidian
geometry proved to be a limiting case. In Lobachevski’s geometry,
the sum of the angles of a triangle was less than two right angles, in
Riemann’s the sum was greater. In Euclidian geometry the sum was
equal to two right angles, which is a limiting case of “greater than”
and “less than” two right angles—one possibility in an infinity of
possibilities.
The starting point of this great generalization of geometry,
however, was Euclid’s axiom of parallels, which states, in effect, that
through a given point only one line can be drawn parallel to a line
on the same plane. Riemannian geometry said none, and Lobachev-
skian geometry said an infinite number. These three geometries,
 Henri Poincaré 263

then, were very different. Many theorems which held for one would
not hold for the others; yet there were common theorems, too. For
example, “the base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal” and
“two lines which are parallel to a third are parallel to each other”
are common to both the Lobachevskian and the Euclidian geometries.
On the other hand, “the area of a circle is ␲r2” is valid only in one
geometry—the Euclidian.
But how can these new geometries be true if the Euclidian
geometry is? How can they be self-consistent? They are consistent
if there is no contradiction among their theorems. But since all the
infinity of possible theorems have not been deduced, how do we
know that some contradiction will not turn up in the future? Poincaré
points out that since a limiting case of both the Lobachevskian and
the Riemannian geometries is equivalent to a branch of ordinary
Euclidian geometry, neither can be regarded as inconsistent—unless
Euclid is also inconsistent! The same conclusion is reached by the
dictionary of terms given on pp. 268–269, whereby Lobachevskian
theorems can be translated into Euclidian theorems.
The question which of the geometries is true still impends.
Poincaré’s answer was that “one geometry can not be more true
than another; it can only be more convenient.” The most convenient is
the Euclidian: it is simplest in itself, in the sense that plane
trigonometry is simpler than spherical trigonometry, and it also
accords best with the properties of the physical objects that we see,
handle, and measure.
Little need be said of the second and third selections. They speak
for themselves and almost read themselves. One thing that may
occur to you in reading the chapter on mathematical discovery,
though Poincaré does not spell it out, is that the creative mind is not
one that simply has more new and important ideas. It is a mind that
simply has more ideas and works faster in eliminating the uninteresting
ones. Secondly, the new ideas would never be discovered if the
mathematician were not always looking for “elegant” short cuts—
shorter proofs and simplifications.
A good memory is necessary, of course, and also careful analysis
which clarifies the problem. The originality of Poincaré’s theory of
discovery is the role which he assigns to the unconscious, and the
interplay between conscious and “unconscious work.” The solution
to a problem may come suddenly, after the mathematician has given
up hope and has turned to altogether unrelated activities.
264 Henri Poincaré

You will see how Poincaré explains what seems to be a “sudden

illumination” that comes to the mathematician when he has forgotten
all about the problem and is thinking of other things. You might
consider an additional explanation. Could it be that when the
mathematician or we ourselves are trying to solve a problem, certain
inhibitions develop which block the door to the correct answer, and
that while engaging in other activities these inhibitions are relaxed?
This would be what the psychologists call “disinhibition.”
Poincaré was close to the spirit and all the developments of
physical science of his time. He was too close to interpret “chance”
as sheer absence of a cause. What evidence is there that things occur
without a cause? And that what has a cause can always, in principle,
be predicted? Nor could he be attracted by the view of some of the
Enlightenment philosophers that all events—however trifling—have
a cause, chance events being merely those whose causes we do not
yet know.
The latter view is unsatisfactory. Chance is not the realm of
ignorance. The motion of the molecules of a gas is random and
fortuitous, yet we can predict what they are going to do en masse
when the gas is heated. We can determine precisely the pressure
which they will exert. Similarly, the actuarian cannot know what
individuals will die next year, but he can predict how many will. It is
not out of ignorance that insurance companies make money.
Statistical laws are of course exceedingly important in science.
The question that has come before the stagelights since Poincaré
wrote is whether the final form of scientific laws is to be statistical
or causal. Poincaré apparently looked forward to the possibility of
advancing beyond statistical laws to causal laws relating to the
particles or individuals. But this was before the development of the
quantum theory and recent theories of the structure of the atom. As
a result of these developments, some of the greatest authorities
believe that there is real indeterminacy in nature and that basic
laws must remain statistical. What Poincaré would say if he were
alive today is an interesting speculation.
 Space

THE NON-EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRIES

very conclusion supposes premises; these premises themselves

either are self-evident and need no demonstration, or can be established
only by relying upon other propositions, and since we cannot go back
thus to infinity, every deductive science, and in particular geometry,
must rest on a certain number of undemonstrable axioms. All treatises
on geometry begin, therefore, by the enunciation of these axioms. But
among these there is a distinction to be made: Some, for example, “Things
which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another,” are not
propositions of geometry, but propositions of analysis. I regard them as
analytic judgments a priori, and shall not concern myself with them.
But I must lay stress upon other axioms which are peculiar to geometry.
Most treatises enunciate three of these explicitly: (1) Through two points
can pass only one straight line. (2) The straight line is the shortest path
from one point to another. (3) Through a given point there is not more
than one parallel to a given straight line.
Although generally a proof of the second of these axioms is omitted,
it would be possible to deduce it from the other two and from those,
much more numerous, which are implicitly admitted without enunciating
them, as I shall explain further on.
It was long sought in vain to demonstrate likewise the third axiom,
known as Euclid’s postulate. What vast effort has been wasted in this
chimeric hope is truly unimaginable. Finally, in the first quarter of the
nineteenth century, and almost at the same time, a Hungarian and a
Russian, Bolyai and Lobachevski, established irrefutably that this
demonstration is impossible; they have almost rid us of inventors of geometries
“sans postulatum”; since then the Académie des Sciences receives only
about one or two new demonstrations a year. The question was not ex-
hausted; it soon made a great stride by the publication of Riemann’s cele-

265
266 Henri Poincaré

brated memoir entitled: Ueber die Hypothesen welche der Geometrie zu Grunde
liegen. This paper has inspired most of the recent works of which I shall
speak further on, and among which it is proper to cite those of Beltrami
and of Helmholtz.
The Bolyai-Lobachevski Geometry. If it were possible to deduce Euclid’s
postulate from the other axioms, it is evident that in denying the postulate
and admitting the other axioms, we should be led to contradictory
consequences; it would therefore be impossible to base on such premises
a coherent geometry.
Now this is precisely what Lobachevski did.
He assumes at the start that: Through a given point can be drawn two
parallels to a given straight line.
And he retains besides all Euclid’s other axioms. From these hypotheses
he deduces a series of theorems among which it is impossible to find any
contradiction, and he constructs a geometry whose faultless logic is inferior
in nothing to that of the Euclidean geometry. The theorems are, of course,
very different from those to which we are accustomed, and they cannot
fail to be at first a little disconcerting. Thus the sum of the angles of a
triangle is always less than two right angles, and the difference between
this sum and two right angles is proportional to the surface of the triangle.
It is impossible to construct a figure similar to a given figure but of different
dimensions. If we divide a circumference into n equal parts, and draw
tangents at the points of division, these n tangents will form a polygon if
the radius of the circle is small enough; but if this radius is sufficiently
great they will not meet.
It is useless to multiply these examples; Lobachevski’s propositions
have no relation to those of Euclid, but they are not less logically bound
one to another.
Riemann’s Geometry. Imagine a world uniquely peopled by beings of no
thickness (height); and suppose these “infinitely flat” animals are all in
the same plane and cannot get out. Admit besides that this world is
sufficiently far from others to be free from their influence. While we are
making hypotheses, it costs us no more to endow these beings with
reason and believe them capable of creating a geometry. In that case,
they will certainly attribute to space only two dimensions.
But suppose now that these imaginary animals, while remaining
without thickness, have the form of a spherical, and not of a plane, figure,
and are all on the same sphere without power to get off. What geometry will
they construct? First it is clear they will attribute to space only two
dimensions; what will play for them the role of the straight line will be
the shortest path from one point to another on the sphere, that is to say,
 S PAC E 267

an arc of a great circle; in a word, their geometry will be the spherical

geometry.
What they will call space will be this sphere on which they must stay,
and on which happen all the phenomena they can know. Their space
will therefore be unbounded since on a sphere one can always go forward
without ever being stopped, and yet it will be finite; one can never find
the end of it, but one can make a tour of it.
Well, Riemann’s geometry is spherical geometry extended to three
dimensions. To construct it, the German mathematician had to throw
overboard, not only Euclid’s postulate, but also the first axiom: Only one
straight line can pass through two points.
On a sphere, through two given points we can draw in general only
one great circle (which, as we have just seen, would play the role of the
straight line for our imaginary beings); but there is an exception: if the
two given points are diametrically opposite, an infinity of great circles
can be drawn through them.
In the same way, in Riemann’s geometry (at least in one of its forms),
through two points will pass in general only a single straight line; but
there are exceptional cases where through two points an infinity of
straight lines can pass.
There is a sort of opposition between Riemann’s geometry and that of
Lobachevski.
Thus the sum of the angles of a triangle is: equal to two right angles
in Euclid’s geometry; less than two right angles in that of Lobachevski;
greater than two right angles in that of Riemann.
The number of straight lines through a given point that can be drawn
coplanar to a given straight line, but nowhere meeting it, is equal: to
one in Euclid’s geometry; to zero in that of Riemann; to infinity in that
of Lobachevski.
Add that Riemann’s space is finite, although unbounded, in the sense
given above to these two words.
The Surfaces of Constant Curvature. One objection still remained possible.
The theorems of Lobachevski and of Riemann present no contradiction;
but however numerous the consequences these two geometers have drawn
from their hypotheses, they must have stopped before exhausting them,
since their number would be infinite; who can say then that if they had
pushed their deductions farther they would not have eventually reached
some contradiction?
This difficulty does not exist for Riemann’s geometry, provided it is
limited to two dimensions; in fact, as we have seen, two-dimensional
Riemannian geometry does not differ from spherical geometry, which is
268 Henri Poincaré

only a branch of ordinary geometry, and consequently is beyond all

discussion.
Beltrami, in correlating likewise Lobachevski’s two-dimensional
geometry with a branch of ordinary geometry, has equally refuted the
objection so far as it is concerned. Here is how he accomplished it.
Consider any figure on a surface. Imagine this figure traced on a flexible
and inextensible canvas applied over this surface in such a way that
when the canvas is displaced and deformed the various lines of this
figure can change their form without changing their length. In general,
this flexible and inextensible figure cannot be displaced without leaving
the surface; but there are certain particular surfaces for which such a
movement would be possible; these are the surfaces of constant curvature.
If we resume the comparison made above and imagine beings without
thickness living on one of these surfaces, they will regard as possible the
motion of a figure all of whose lines remain constant in length. On the
contrary, such a movement would appear absurd to animals without
thickness living on a surface of variable curvature.
These surfaces of constant curvature are of two sorts: Some are of
positive curvature, and can be deformed so as to be applied over a sphere.
The geometry of these surfaces reduces itself therefore to the spherical
geometry, which is that of Riemann.
The others are of negative curvature. Beltrami has shown that the
geometry of these surfaces is none other than that of Lobachevski. The
two-dimensional geometries of Riemann and Lobachevski are thus
correlated to the Euclidean geometry.
Interpretation of Non-Euclidean Geometries. So vanishes the objection so
far as two-dimensional geometries are concerned.
It would be easy to extend Beltrami’s reasoning to three-dimensional
geometries. The minds that space of four dimensions does not repel will
see no difficulty in it, but they are few. I prefer therefore to proceed
otherwise.
Consider a certain plane, which I shall call the fundamental plane,
and construct a sort of dictionary, by making correspond each to each a
double series of terms written in two columns, just as correspond in the
ordinary dictionaries the words of two languages whose significance is
the same:
Space: Portion of space situated above the fundamental plane.
Plane: Sphere cutting the fundamental plane orthogonally.
Straight line: Circle cutting the fundamental plane orthogonally.
Sphere: Sphere.
 S PAC E 269

Circle: Circle.
Angle: Angle.
Distance between two points: Logarithm of the cross ratio of these two
points and the intersections of the fundamental plane with a circle
passing through these two points and cutting it orthogonally. Etc., etc.
Now take Lobachevski’s theorems and translate them with the aid of
this dictionary as we translate a German text with the aid of a German-
English dictionary. We shall thus obtain theorems of the ordinary geometry. For
example, that theorem of Lobachevski: “the sum of the angles of a triangle
is less than two right angles” is translated thus: “If a curvilinear triangle
has for sides circle-arcs which prolonged would cut orthogonally the
fundamental plane, the sum of the angles of this curvilinear triangle
will be less than two right angles.” Thus, however far the consequences
of Lobachevski’s hypotheses are pushed, they will never lead to a
contradiction. In fact, if two of Lobachevski’s theorems were
contradictory, it would be the same with the translations of these two
theorems, made by the aid of our dictionary, but these translations are
theorems of ordinary geometry and no one doubts that the ordinary
geometry is free from contradiction. Whence comes this certainty and is
it justified? That is a question I cannot treat here because it would require
to be enlarged upon, but which is very interesting and I think not
insoluble.
Nothing remains then of the objection above formulated. This is not
all. Lobachevski’s geometry, susceptible of a concrete interpretation,
ceases to be a vain logical exercise and is capable of applications; I
have not the time to speak here of these applications, nor of the aid
that Klein and I have gotten from them for the integration of linear
differential equations.
This interpretation moreover is not unique, and several dictionaries
analogous to the preceding could be constructed, which would enable
us by a simple “translation” to transform Lobachevski’s theorems into
theorems of ordinary geometry.
The Implicit Axioms. Are the axioms explicitly enunciated in our treatises
the sole foundations of geometry? We may be assured of the contrary by
noticing that after they are successively abandoned there are still left
over some propositions common to the theories of Euclid, Lobachevski
and Riemann. These propositions must rest on premises the geometers
admit without enunciation. It is interesting to try to disentangle them
from the classic demonstrations.
[John] Stuart Mill has claimed that every definition contains an axiom,
270 Henri Poincaré

because in defining one affirms implicitly the existence of the object

defined. This is going much too far; it is rare that in mathematics a
definition is given without its being followed by the demonstration of
the existence of the object defined, and when this is dispensed with it is
generally because the reader can easily supply it. It must not be forgotten
that the word existence has not the same sense when it refers to a
mathematical entity and when it is a question of a material object. A
mathematical entity exists, provided its definition implies no
contradiction, either in itself, or with the propositions already admitted.
But if Stuart Mill’s observation cannot be applied to all definitions, it
is none the less just for some of them. The plane is sometimes defined as
follows: The plane is a surface such that the straight line which joins
any two of its points is wholly on this surface. This definition manifestly
hides a new axiom; it is true we might change it, and that would be
preferable, but then we should have to enunciate the axiom explicitly.
Other definitions would suggest reflections not less important. Such,
for example, is that of the equality of two figures; two figures are equal
when they can be superposed; to superpose them one must be displaced
until it coincides with the other; but how shall it be displaced? If we
should ask this, no doubt we should be told that it must be done without
altering the shape and as a rigid solid. The vicious circle would then be
evident.
In fact this definition defines nothing; it would have no meaning for
a being living in a world where there were only fluids. If it seems clear
to us, that is because we are used to the properties of natural solids
which do not differ much from those of the ideal solids, all of whose
dimensions are invariable.
Yet, imperfect as it may be, this definition implies an axiom.
The possibility of the motion of a rigid figure is not a self-evident
truth, or at least it is so only in the fashion of Euclid’s postulate and not
as an analytic judgment a priori would be. Moreover, in studying the
definitions and the demonstrations of geometry, we see that one is obliged
to admit without proof not only the possibility of this motion, but some
of its properties besides.
This is at once seen from the definition of the straight line. Many
defective definitions have been given, but the true one is that which is
implied in all the demonstrations where the straight line enters: “It may
happen that the motion of a rigid figure is such that all the points of a
line belonging to this figure remain motionless while all the points
situated outside of this line move. Such a line will be called a straight
 S PAC E 271

line.” We have designedly, in this enunciation, separated the definition

from the axiom it implies.
Many demonstrations, such as those of the cases of the equality of
triangles, of the possibility of dropping a perpendicular from a point to a
straight line, presume propositions which are not enunciated, for they
require the admission that it is possible to transport a figure in a certain
way in space.
The Fourth Geometry. Among these implicit axioms, there is one which
seems to me to merit some attention, because when it is abandoned a
fourth geometry can be constructed as coherent as those of Euclid,
Lobachevski and Riemann.
To prove that a perpendicular may always be erected at a point A to
a straight line AB, we consider a straight line AC movable around the
point A and initially coincident with the fixed straight line AB; and
we make it turn about the point A until it comes into the prolongation
of AB.
Thus two propositions are presupposed: First, that such a rotation is
possible, and next that it may be continued until the two straight lines
come into the prolongation one of the other. If the first point is admitted
and the second rejected, we are led to a series of theorems even stranger
than those of Lobachevski and Riemann, but equally exempt from
contradiction. I shall cite only one of these theorems and that not the
most singular: A real straight line may be perpendicular to itself.
Lie’s Theorem. The number of axioms implicitly introduced in the classic
demonstrations is greater than necessary, and it would be interesting to
reduce it to a minimum. It may first be asked whether this reduction is
possible, whether the number of necessary axioms and that of imaginable
geometries are not infinite.
A theorem of Sophus Lie dominates this whole discussion. It may be
thus enunciated: Suppose the following premises are admitted: (1) Space
has n dimensions. (2) The motion of a rigid figure is possible. (3) It
requires p conditions to determine the position of this figure in space.
The number of geometries compatible with these premises will be limited. I may
even add that if n is given, a superior limit can be assigned to p. If,
therefore, the possibility of motion is admitted, there can be invented
only a finite (and even a rather small) number of three-dimensional
geometries.
Riemann’s Geometries. Yet this result seems contradicted by Riemann,
for this savant constructs an infinity of different geometries, and that to
which his name is ordinarily given is only a particular case. All depends,
272 Henri Poincaré

he says, on how the length of a curve is defined. Now, there is an infinity

of ways of defining this length, and each of them may be the starting
point of a new geometry.
That is perfectly true, but most of these definitions are incompatible
with the motion of a rigid figure, which in the theorem of Lie is supposed
possible. These geometries of Riemann, in many ways so interesting,
could never therefore be other than purely analytic and would not lend
themselves to demonstrations analogous to those of Euclid.
On the Nature of Axioms. Most mathematicians regard Lobachevski’s
geometry only as a mere logical curiosity; some of them, however, have
gone farther. Since several geometries are possible, is it certain ours is
the true one? Experience no doubt teaches us that the sum of the angles
of a triangle is equal to two right angles; but this is because the triangles
we deal with are too little; the difference, according to Lobachevski, is
proportional to the surface of the triangle; will it not perhaps become
sensible when we shall operate on larger triangles or when our
measurements shall become more precise? The Euclidean geometry would
thus be only a provisional geometry.
To discuss this opinion, we should first ask ourselves what is the
nature of the geometric axioms.
Are they synthetic a priori judgments, as Kant said? They would
then impose themselves upon us with such force that we could not
conceive the contrary proposition, nor build upon it a theoretic edifice.
There would be no non-Euclidean geometry.
To be convinced of it take a veritable synthetic a priori judgment, the
following, for instance, of which we have seen the preponderant role in
the first chapter: If a theorem is true for the number 1, and if it has been proved
that it is true of n + 1 provided it is true of n, it will be true of all the positive whole
numbers.
Then try to escape from that and, denying this proposition, try to
found a false arithmetic analogous to non-Euclidean geometry—it cannot
be done; one would even be tempted at first blush to regard these
judgments as analytic. Moreover, resuming our fiction of animals without
thickness, we can hardly admit that these beings, if their minds are like
ours, would adopt the Euclidean geometry which would be contradicted
by all their experience. Should we therefore conclude that the axioms of
geometry are experimental verities? But we do not experiment on ideal
straight lines or circles; it can only be done on material objects. On what
then could be based experiments which should serve as foundation for
geometry? The answer is easy.
 S PAC E 273

We have seen above that we constantly reason as if the geometric

figures behaved like solids. What geometry would borrow from
experience would therefore be the properties of these bodies. The
properties of light and its rectilinear propagation have also given rise to
some of the propositions of geometry, and in particular these of projective
geometry, so that from this point of view one would be tempted to say
that metric geometry is the study of solids, and projective, that of light.
But a difficulty remains, and it is insurmountable. If geometry were an
experimental science, it would not be an exact science, it would be subject
to a continual revision. Nay, it would from this very day be convicted of
error, since we know that there is no rigorously rigid solid.
The axioms of geometry therefore are neither synthetic a priori judgments nor
experimental facts. They are conventions; our choice among all possible
conventions is guided by experimental facts; but it remains free and is
limited only by the necessity of avoiding all contradiction. Thus it is
that the postulates can remain rigorously true even though the experimental
laws which have determined their adoption are only approximative. In
other words, the axioms of geometry (I do not speak of those of arithmetic)
are merely disguised definitions.
Then what are we to think of that question: Is the Euclidean geometry
true? It has no meaning. As well ask whether the metric system is true
and the old measures false; whether Cartesian co-ordinates are true and
polar co-ordinates false. One geometry cannot be more true than another;
it can only be more convenient.
Now, Euclidean geometry is, and will remain, the most convenient:
(1) because it is the simplest; and it is so not only in consequence of our
mental habits, or of I know not what direct intuition that we may have
of Euclidean space; it is the simplest in itself, just as a polynomial of the
first degree is simpler than one of the second; the formulas of spherical
trigonometry are more complicated than those of plane trigonometry,
and they would still appear so to an analyst ignorant of their geometric
signification; (2) because it accords sufficiently well with the properties
of natural solids, those bodies which our hands and our eyes compare
and with which we make our instruments of measure.

SPACE AND G EOMETRY

Let us begin by a little paradox. Beings with minds like ours, and
having the same senses as we, but without previous education, would
receive from a suitably chosen external world impressions such that they
274 Henri Poincaré

would be led to construct a geometry other than that of Euclid and to

localize the phenomena of that external world in a non-Euclidean space,
or even in a space of four dimensions.
As for us, whose education has been accomplished by our actual world,
if we were suddenly transported into this new world, we should have
no difficulty in referring its phenomena to our Euclidean space.
Conversely, if these beings were transported into our environment, they
would be led to relate our phenomena to non-Euclidean space. Nay
more; with a little effort we likewise could do it. A person who should
devote his existence to it might perhaps attain to a realization of the
fourth dimension.
Geometric Space and Perceptual Space. It is often said the images of external
objects are localized in space, even that they cannot be formed except on
this condition. It is also said that this space, which serves thus as a ready
prepared frame for our sensations and our representations, is identical
with that of the geometers, of which it possesses all the properties.
To all the good minds who think thus, the preceding statement must
have appeared quite extraordinary. But let us see whether they are not
subject to an illusion that a more profound analysis would dissipate.
What, first of all, are the properties of space, properly so called? I mean
of that space which is the object of geometry and which I shall call
geometric space. The following are some of the most essential: (1) It is
continuous. (2) It is infinite. (3) It has three dimensions. (4) It is
homogeneous, that is to say, all its points are identical one with another.
(5) It is isotropic, that is to say, all the straight lines which pass through
the same point are identical one with another.
Compare it now to the frame of our representations and our sensations,
which I may call perceptual space.
Visual Space. Consider first a purely visual impression, due to an image
formed on the bottom of the retina. A cursory analysis shows us this
image as continuous, but as possessing only two dimensions; this already
distinguishes from geometric space what we may call pure visual space.
Besides, this image is enclosed in a limited frame.
Finally, there is another difference not less important: this pure visual
space is not homogeneous. All the points of the retina, aside from the images
which may there be formed, do not play the same role. The yellow spot
can in no way be regarded as identical with a point on the border of the
retina. In fact, not only does the same object produce there much more
vivid impressions, but in every limited frame the point occupying the
center of the frame will never appear as equivalent to a point near one
 S PAC E 275

of the borders. No doubt a more profound analysis would show us that

this continuity of visual space and its two dimensions are only an illusion;
it would separate it therefore still more from geometric space, but we
shall not dwell on this remark.
Sight, however, enables us to judge of distances and consequently to
perceive a third dimension. But everyone knows that this perception of
the third dimension reduces itself to the sensation of the effort at
accommodation it is necessary to make, and to that of the convergence
which must be given to the two eyes, to perceive an object distinctly.
These are muscular sensations altogether different from the visual
sensations which have given us the notion of the first two dimensions.
The third dimension therefore will not appear to us as playing the same
role as the other two. What may be called complete visual space is therefore
not an isotropic space. It has, it is true, precisely three dimensions, which
means that the elements of our visual sensations (those at least which
combine to form the notion of extension) will be completely defined
when three of them are known; to use the language of mathematics, they
will be functions of three independent variables.
But examine the matter a little more closely. The third dimension is
revealed to us in two different ways: by the effort of accommodation and
by the convergence of the eyes. No doubt these two indications are always
concordant, there is a constant relation between them, or, in mathematical
terms, the two variables which measure these two muscular sensations
do not appear to us as independent; or again, to avoid an appeal to
mathematical notions already rather refined, we may go back to the
language of the preceding chapter and enunciate the same fact as follows:
If two sensations of convergence, A and B, are indistinguishable, the
two sensations of accommodation, A ′ and B ′ , which respectively
accompany them, will be equally indistinguishable.
But here we have, so to speak, an experimental fact; a priori nothing
prevents our supposing the contrary, and if the contrary takes place, if
these two muscular sensations vary independently of one another, we
shall have to take account of one more independent variable, and “complete
visual space” will appear to us as a physical continuum of four dimensions.
We have here even, I will add, a fact of external experience. Nothing
prevents our supposing that a being with a mind like ours, having the
same sense organs that we have, may be placed in a world where light
would only reach him after having traversed reflecting media of complicated
form. The two indications which serve us in judging distances would
cease to be connected by a constant relation. A being who should
276 Henri Poincaré

achieve in such a world the education of his senses would no doubt

attribute four dimensions to complete visual space.
Tactile Space and Motor Space. “Tactile space” is still more complicated
than visual space and farther removed from geometric space. It is
superfluous to repeat for touch the discussion I have given for sight.
But apart from the data of sight and touch, there are other sensations
which contribute as much and more than they to the genesis of the
notion of space. These are known to everyone; they accompany all our
movements, and are usually called muscular sensations. The
corresponding frame constitutes what may be called motor space. Each
muscle gives rise to a special sensation capable of augmenting or of
diminishing, so that the totality of our muscular sensations will depend
upon as many variables as we have muscles. From this point of view,
motor space would have as many dimensions as we have muscles.
I know it will be said that if the muscular sensations contribute to
form the notion of space, it is because we have the sense of the direction of
each movement and that it makes an integrant part of the sensation. If
this were so, if a muscular sensation could not arise except accompanied
by this geometric sense of direction, geometric space would indeed be a
form imposed upon our sensibility. But I perceive nothing at all of this
when I analyze my sensations.
What I do see is that the sensations which correspond to movements
in the same direction are connected in my mind by a mere association of
ideas. It is to this association that what we call “the sense of direction” is
reducible. This feeling therefore cannot be found in a single sensation.
This association is extremely complex, for the contraction of the same
muscle may correspond, according to the position of the limbs, to
movements of very different direction. Besides, it is evidently acquired;
it is, like all associations of ideas, the result of a habit; this habit itself
results from very numerous experiences; without any doubt, if the
education of our senses had been accomplished in a different
environment, where we should have been subjected to different
impressions, contrary habits would have arisen and our muscular
sensations would have been associated according to other laws.
Characteristics of Perceptual Space. Thus perceptual space, under its triple
form, visual, tactile and motor, is essentially different from geometric
space. It is neither homogeneous, nor isotropic; one cannot even say
that it has three dimensions.
It is often said that we “project” into geometric space the objects of our
external perception; that we “localize” them. Has this a meaning, and if
 S PAC E 277

so, what? Does it mean that we represent to ourselves external objects in

geometric space?
Our representations are only the reproduction of our sensations; they
can therefore be ranged only in the same frame as these, that is to say, in
perceptual space. It is as impossible for us to represent to ourselves
external bodies in geometric space as it is for a painter to paint on a
plane canvas objects with their three dimensions.
Perceptual space is only an image of geometric space, an image altered
in shape by a sort of perspective, and we can represent to ourselves objects
only by bringing them under the laws of this perspective. Therefore we
do not represent to ourselves external bodies in geometric space, but we
reason on these bodies as if they were situated in geometric space.
When it is said then that we “localize” such and such an object at
such and such a point of space, what does it mean? It simply means that we
represent to ourselves the movements it would be necessary to make to reach that
object; and one may not say that to represent to oneself these movements,
it is necessary to project the movements themselves in space and that the
notion of space must, consequently, pre-exist.
When I say that we represent to ourselves these movements, I mean
only that we represent to ourselves the muscular sensations which
accompany them and which have no geometric character whatever,
which consequently do not at all imply the pre-existence of the notion
of space.
Change of State and Change of Position. But, it will be said, if the idea of
geometric space is not imposed upon our mind, and if, on the other
hand, none of our sensations can furnish it, how could it have come
into existence? This is what we have now to examine, and it will take
some time, but I can summarize in a few words the attempt at explanation
that I am about to develop.
None of our sensations, isolated, could have conducted us to the idea of space; we
are led to it only in studying the laws, according to which these sensations succeed
each other. We see first that our impressions are subject to change; but
among the changes we ascertain we are soon led to make a distinction.
At one time we say that the objects which cause these impressions have
changed state, at another time that they have changed position, that
they have only been displaced. Whether an object changes its state or
merely its position, this is always translated for us in the same manner:
by a modification in an aggregate of impressions.
How then could we have been led to distinguish between the two? It
is easy to account for. If there has only been a change of position, we can
278 Henri Poincaré

restore the primitive aggregate of impressions by making movements

which replace us opposite the mobile object in the same relative situation.
We thus correct the modification that happened and we re-establish the
initial state by an inverse modification. If it is a question of sight, for
example, and if an object changes its place before our eye, we can “follow
it with the eye” and maintain its image on the same point of the retina
by appropriate movements of the eyeball. These movements we are
conscious of because they are voluntary and because they are accompanied
by muscular sensations, but that does not mean that we represent them
to ourselves in geometric space. So what characterizes change of position,
what distinguishes it from change of state, is that it can always be corrected
in this way.
It may therefore happen that we pass from the totality of impressions
A to the totality B in two different ways: (1) involuntarily and without
experiencing muscular sensations; this happens when it is the object
which changes place; (2) voluntarily and with muscular sensations; this
happens when the object is motionless, but we move so that the object
has relative motion with reference to us. If this be so, the passage from
the totality A to the totality B is only a change of position.
It follows from this that sight and touch could not have given us the
notion of space without the aid of the “muscular sense.” Not only could
this notion not be derived from a single sensation or even from a series of
sensations, but what is more, an immobile being could never have acquired
it, since, not being able to correct by his movements the effects of the
changes of position of exterior objects, he would have had no reason
whatever to distinguish them from changes of state. Just as little could
he have acquired it if his motions had not been voluntary or were
unaccompanied by any sensations.
Conditions of Compensation. How is a like compensation possible, of such
sort that two changes, otherwise independent of each other, reciprocally
correct each other?
A mind already familiar with geometry would reason as follows:
Evidently, if there is to be compensation, the various parts of the external
object, on the one hand, and the various sense organs, on the other
hand, must be in the same relative position after the double change.
And, for that to be the case, the various parts of the external object must
likewise have retained in reference to each other the same relative position,
and the same must be true of the various parts of our body in regard to
each other. In other words, the external object, in the first change, must
be displaced as is a rigid solid, and so must it be with the whole of our
 S PAC E 279

body in the second change which corrects the first. Under these
conditions, compensation may take place.
But we who as yet know nothing of geometry, since for us the notion
of space is not yet formed, we cannot reason thus, we cannot foresee a
priori whether compensation is possible. But experience teaches us that
it sometimes happens, and it is from this experimental fact that we start
to distinguish changes of state from changes of position.
Solid Bodies and Geometry. Among surrounding objects there are some
which frequently undergo displacements susceptible of being thus
corrected by a correlative movement of our own body; these are the solid
bodies. The other objects, whose form is variable, only exceptionally
undergo like displacements (change of position without change of form).
When a body changes its place and its shape, we can no longer, by
appropriate movements, bring back our sense organs into the same relative
situation with regard to this body; consequently we can no longer re-
establish the primitive totality of impressions.
It is only later, and as a consequence of new experiences, that we
learn how to decompose the bodies of variable form into smaller elements,
such that each is displaced almost in accordance with the same laws as
solid bodies. Thus we distinguish “deformations” from other changes of
state; in these deformations, each element undergoes a mere change of
position, which can be corrected, but the modification undergone by
the aggregate is more profound and is no longer susceptible of correction
by a correlative movement. Such a notion is already very complex and
must have been relatively late in appearing; moreover it could not have
arisen if the observation of solid bodies had not already taught us to
distinguish changes of position. Therefore, if there were no solid bodies in
nature, there would be no geometry.
Another remark also deserves a moment’s attention. Suppose a solid
body to occupy successively the positions α and β; in its first position, it
will produce on us the totality of impressions A, and in its second position
the totality of impressions B. Let there be now a second solid body,
having qualities entirely different from the first, for example, a different
color. Suppose it to pass from the position α, where it gives us the totality
of impressions A′ , to the position β , where it gives the totality of
impressions B′. In general, the totality A will have nothing in common
with the totality A′, nor the totality B with the totality B′. The transition
from the totality A to the totality B and that from the totality A′ to the
totality B′ are therefore two changes which in themselves have in general
nothing in common.
280 Henri Poincaré

And yet we regard these two changes both as displacements and,

furthermore, we consider them as the same displacement. How can that
be? It is simply because they can both be corrected by the same correlative
movement of our body. “Correlative movement” therefore constitutes
the sole connection between two phenomena which otherwise we never
should have dreamed of likening.
On the other hand, our body, thanks to the number of its articulations
and muscles, may make a multitude of different movements; but all are
not capable of “correcting” a modification of external objects; only those
will be capable of it in which our whole body, or at least all those of our
sense organs which come into play, are displaced as a whole, that is,
without their relative positions varying, or in the fashion of a solid body.
To summarize:
(1) We are led at first to distinguish two categories of phenomena:
some, involuntary, unaccompanied by muscular sensations, are attributed
by us to external objects; these are external changes; others, opposite in
character and attributed by us to the movements of our own body, are
internal changes. (2) We notice that certain changes of each of these
categories may be corrected by a correlative change of the other category.
(3) We distinguish among external changes those which have thus a
correlative in the other category; these we call displacements; and just
so among the internal changes, we distinguish those which have a
correlative in the first category.
Thus are defined, thanks to this reciprocity, a particular class of
phenomena which we call displacements. The laws of these phenomena
constitute the object of geometry.
Law of Homogeneity. The first of these laws is the law of homogeneity.
Suppose that, by an external change α, we pass from the totality of
impressions A to the totality B, then that this change α is corrected by a
correlative voluntary movement β, so that we are brought back to the
totality A. Suppose now that another external change α′ makes us pass
anew from the totality A to the totality B. Experience teaches us that this
change α′ is, like α , susceptible of being corrected by a correlative
voluntary movement β′ and that this movement β′ corresponds to the
same muscular sensations as the movement β which corrected α. This
fact is usually enunciated by saying that space is homogeneous and isotropic.
It may also be said that a movement which has once been produced
may be repeated a second and a third time, and so on, without its properties
varying. In the first chapter, where we discussed the nature of mathe-
matical reasoning, we saw the importance which must be attributed to
 S PAC E 281

the possibility of repeating indefinitely the same operation. It is from

this repetition that mathematical reasoning gets its power; it is, therefore,
thanks to the law of homogeneity that it has a hold on the geometric
facts. For completeness, to the law of homogeneity should be added a
multitude of other analogous laws, into the details of which I do not
wish to enter, but which mathematicians sum up in a word by saying
that displacements form “a group.”
The Non-Euclidean World. If geometric space were a frame imposed on
each of our representations, considered individually, it would be
impossible to represent to ourselves an image stripped of this frame, and
we could change nothing of our geometry. But this is not the case;
geometry is only the résumé of the laws according to which these images
succeed each other. Nothing then prevents us from imagining a series of
representations, similar in all points to our ordinary representations, but
succeeding one another according to laws different from those to which
we are accustomed. We can conceive then that beings who received
their education in an environment where these laws were thus upset
might have a geometry very different from ours.
Suppose, for example, a world enclosed in a great sphere and subject
to the following laws: The temperature is not uniform; it is greatest at
the center, and diminishes in proportion to the distance from the center,
to sink to absolute zero when the sphere is reached in which this world
is enclosed. To specify still more precisely the law in accordance with
which this temperature varies: Let R be the radius of the limiting sphere;
let r be the distance of the point considered from the center of this sphere.
The absolute temperature shall be proportional to R2 – r2. I shall further
suppose that, in this world, all bodies have the same coefficient of
dilatation, so that the length of any rule is proportional to its absolute
temperature. Finally, I shall suppose that a body transported from one
point to another of different temperature is put immediately into thermal
equilibrium with its new environment. Nothing in these hypotheses is
contradictory or unimaginable.
A movable object will then become smaller and smaller in proportion
as it approaches the limit-sphere. Note first that, though this world is
limited from the point of view of our ordinary geometry, it will appear
infinite to its inhabitants. In fact, when these try to approach the limit-
sphere, they cool off and become smaller and smaller. Therefore the
steps they take are also smaller and smaller, so that they can never reach
the limiting sphere.
If, for us, geometry is only the study of the laws according to which
282 Henri Poincaré

rigid solids move, for these imaginary beings it will be the study of the
laws of motion of solids distorted by the differences of temperature just spoken
of. No doubt, in our world, natural solids likewise undergo variations
of form and volume due to warming or cooling. But we neglect these
variations in laying the foundations of geometry, because, besides their
being very slight, they are irregular and consequently seem to us
accidental. In our hypothetical world, this would no longer be the case,
and these variations would follow regular and very simple laws. Moreover,
the various solid pieces of which the bodies of its inhabitants would be
composed would undergo the same variations of form and volume.
I will make still another hypothesis; I will suppose light traverses
media diversely refractive and such that the index of refraction is
inversely proportional to R 2 – r 2. It is easy to see that, under these
conditions, the rays of light would not be rectilinear, but circular.
To justify what precedes, it remains for me to show that certain changes
in the position of external objects can be corrected by correlative movements
of the sentient beings inhabiting this imaginary world, and that in such
a way as to restore the primitive aggregate of impressions experienced by
these sentient beings.
Suppose in fact that an object is displaced, undergoing deformation,
not as a rigid solid, but as a solid subjected to unequal dilatations in
exact conformity to the law of temperature above supposed. Permit me
for brevity to call such a movement a non-Euclidean displacement. If a sentient
being happens to be in the neighborhood, his impressions will be modified
by the displacement of the object, but he can re-establish them by moving
in a suitable manner. It suffices if finally the aggregate of the object and
the sentient being, considered as forming a single body, has undergone
one of those particular displacements I have just called non-Euclidean.
This is possible if it be supposed that the limbs of these beings dilate
according to the same law as the other bodies of the world they inhabit.
Although from the point of view of our ordinary geometry there is a
deformation of the bodies in this displacement and their various parts
are no longer in the same relative position, nevertheless we shall see that
the impressions of the sentient being have once more become the same.
In fact, though the mutual distances of the various parts may have varied,
yet the parts originally in contact are again in contact. Therefore the
tactile impressions have not changed. On the other hand, taking into
account the hypothesis made above in regard to the refraction and the
curvature of the rays of light, the visual impressions will also have
remained the same.
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These imaginary beings will therefore like ourselves be led to classify

the phenomena they witness and to distinguish among them the “changes
of position” susceptible of correction by a correlative voluntary movement.
If they construct a geometry, it will not be, as ours is, the study of the
movements of our rigid solids; it will be the study of the changes of
position which they will thus have distinguished and which are none
other than the “non-Euclidean displacements”; it will be non-Euclidean
geometry. Thus beings like ourselves, educated in such a world, would
not have the same geometry as ours.
The World of Four Dimensions. We can represent to ourselves a four-
dimensional world just as well as a non-Euclidean.
The sense of sight, even with a single eye, together with the muscular
sensations relative to the movements of the eyeball, would suffice to
teach us space of three dimensions. The images of external objects are
painted on the retina, which is a two-dimensional canvas; they are
perspectives. But, as eye and objects are movable, we see in succession
various perspectives of the same body, taken from different points of
view. At the same time, we find that the transition from one perspective
to another is often accompanied by muscular sensations. If the transition
from the perspective A to the perspective B, and that from the perspective
A′ to the perspective B′ are accompanied by the same muscular sensations,
we liken them one to the other as operations of the same nature.
Studying then the laws according to which these operations combine,
we recognize that they form a group, which has the same structure as
that of the movements of rigid solids. Now, we have seen that it is from
the properties of this group we have derived the notion of geometric
space and that of three dimensions. We understand thus how the idea of
a space of three dimensions could take birth from the pageant of these
perspectives, though each of them is of only two dimensions, since they
follow one another according to certain laws.
Well, just as the perspective of a three-dimensional figure can be made
on a plane, we can make that of a four-dimensional figure on a picture of
three (or of two) dimensions. To a geometer this is only child’s play. We
can even take of the same figure several perspectives from several different
points of view. We can easily represent to ourselves these perspectives,
since they are of only three dimensions.
Imagine that the various perspectives of the same object succeed one
another, and that the transition from one to the other is accompanied by
muscular sensations. We shall of course consider two of these transitions
as two operations of the same nature when they are associated with the
same muscular sensations. Nothing then prevents us from imagining that
284 Henri Poincaré

these operations combine according to any law we choose, for example, so

as to form a group with the same structure as that of the movements of a
rigid solid of four dimensions. Here there is nothing unpicturable, and
yet these sensations are precisely those which would be felt by a being
possessed of a two-dimensional retina who could move in space of four
dimensions. In this sense we may say the fourth dimension is imaginable.
Conclusions. We see that experience plays an indispensable role in the
genesis of geometry; but it would be an error thence to conclude that
geometry is, even in part, an experimental science. If it were
experimental, it would be only approximative and provisional. And what
rough approximation!
Geometry would be only the study of the movements of solids; but in
reality it is not occupied with natural solids, it has for object certain
ideal solids, absolutely rigid, which are only a simplified and very remote
image of natural solids. The notion of these ideal solids is drawn from
all parts of our mind, and experience is only an occasion which induces
us to bring it forth from them.
The object of geometry is the study of a particular “group”; but the
general group concept pre-exists, at least potentially, in our minds. It is
imposed on us, not as form of our sense, but as form of our understanding.
Only, from among all the possible groups, that must be chosen which will
be, so to speak, the standard to which we shall refer natural phenomena.
Experience guides us in this choice without forcing it upon us; it tells us
not which is the truest geometry, but which is the most convenient.
Notice that I have been able to describe the fantastic worlds above
imagined without ceasing to employ the language of ordinary geometry. And, in
fact, we should not have to change it if transported thither. Beings
educated there would doubtless find it more convenient to create a
geometry different from ours, and better adapted to their impressions.
As for us, in face of the same impressions, it is certain that we should
find it more convenient not to change our habits.

EXPERIENCE AND GEOMETRY

1. Already in the preceding pages I have several times tried to show

that the principles of geometry are not experimental facts and that in
particular Euclid’s postulate cannot be proven experimentally. However
decisive appear to me the reasons already given, I believe I should emphasize
this point because here a false idea is profoundly rooted in many minds.
2. If we construct a material circle, measure its radius and circum-
 S PAC E 285

ference, and see if the ratio of these two lengths is equal to π, what shall
we have done? We shall have made an experiment on the properties of
the matter with which we constructed this round thing, and of that of
which the measure used was made.
3. Geometry and Astronomy. The question has also been put in another
way. If Lobachevski’s geometry is true, the parallax of a very distant star
will be finite; if Riemann’s is true, it will be negative. These are results
which seem within the reach of experiment, and there have been hopes
that astronomical observations might enable us to decide between the
three geometries.
But in astronomy “straight line” means simply “path of a ray of light.”
If therefore negative parallaxes were found, or if it were demonstrated
that all parallaxes are superior to a certain limit, two courses would be
open to us: we might either renounce Euclidean geometry, or else modify
the laws of optics and suppose that light does not travel rigorously in a
straight line. It is needless to add that all the world would regard the
latter solution as the more advantageous. The Euclidean geometry has,
therefore, nothing to fear from fresh experiments.
4. Is the position tenable that certain phenomena, possible in Euclidean
space, would be impossible in non-Euclidean space, so that experience,
in establishing these phenomena, would directly contradict the non-
Euclidean hypothesis? For my part I think no such question can be put.
To my mind it is precisely equivalent to the following, whose absurdity
is patent to all eyes: are there lengths expressible in meters and
centimeters, but which cannot be measured in fathoms, feet and inches,
so that experience, in ascertaining the existence of these lengths, would
directly contradict the hypothesis that there are fathoms divided into
six feet?
Examine the question more closely. I suppose that the straight line
possesses in Euclidean space any two properties which I shall call A and
B; that in non-Euclidean space it still possesses the property A, but no
longer has the property B; finally I suppose that in both Euclidean and
non-Euclidean space the straight line is the only line having the property
A. If this were so, experience would be capable of deciding between the
hypothesis of Euclid and that of Lobachevski. It would be ascertained
that a definite concrete object, accessible to experiment, for example, a
pencil of rays of light, possesses the property A; we should conclude that
it is rectilinear, and then investigate whether or not it has the property B.
But this is not so; no property exists which, like this property A, can be
an absolute criterion enabling us to recognize the straight line and to
286 Henri Poincaré

distinguish it from every other line. Shall we say, for instance: “The
following is such a property: the straight line is a line such that a figure
of which this line forms a part can be moved without the mutual distances
of its points varying and so that all points of this line remain fixed”?
This, in fact, is a property which, in Euclidean or non-Euclidean
space, belongs to the straight line and belongs only to it. But how shall
we ascertain experimentally whether it belongs to this or that concrete
object? It will be necessary to measure distances, and how shall one
know that any concrete magnitude which I have measured with my
material instrument really represents the abstract distance? We have only
pushed back the difficulty. In reality the property just enunciated is not
a property of the straight line alone, it is a property of the straight line
and distance. For it to serve as absolute criterion, we should have to be
able to establish not only that it does not also belong to a line other than
the straight line and to distance, but in addition that it does not belong to
a line other than the straight line and to a magnitude other than distance.
Now this is not true. It is therefore impossible to imagine a concrete
experiment which can be interpreted in the Euclidean system and not in
the Lobachevskian system, so that I may conclude: No experience will
ever be in contradiction to Euclid’s postulate; nor, on the other hand,
will any experience ever contradict the postulate of Lobachevski.
5. But it is not enough that the Euclidean (or non-Euclidean) geometry
can never be directly contradicted by experience. Might it not happen
that it can accord with experience only by violating the principle of
sufficient reason or that of the relativity of space?
I will explain myself: Consider any material system; we shall have to
regard, on the one hand, “the state” of the various bodies of this system
(for instance, their temperature, their electric potential, etc.), and, on
the other hand, their position in space; and among the data which enable
us to define this position we shall, moreover, distinguish the mutual
distances of these bodies, which define their relative positions, from the
conditions which define the absolute position of the system and its
absolute orientation in space.
The laws of the phenomena which will happen in this system will
depend on the state of these bodies and their mutual distances; but,
because of the relativity and passivity of space, they will not depend on
the absolute position and orientation of the system. In other words, the
state of the bodies and their mutual distances at any instant will depend
solely on the state of these same bodies and on their mutual distances at
the initial instant, but will not at all depend on the absolute initial position
 S PAC E 287

of the system or on its absolute initial orientation. This is what for brevity
I shall call the law of relativity.
Hitherto I have spoken as a Euclidean geometer. As I have said, an
experience, whatever it be, admits of an interpretation on the Euclidean
hypothesis; but it admits of one equally on the non-Euclidean hypothesis.
Well, we have made a series of experiments; we have interpreted them
on the Euclidean hypothesis, and we have recognized that these
experiments thus interpreted do not violate this “law of relativity.”
We now interpret them on the non-Euclidean hypothesis: this is always
possible; only the non-Euclidean distances of our different bodies in
this new interpretation will not generally be the same as the Euclidean
distances in the primitive interpretation.
Will our experiments, interpreted in this new manner, still be in accord
with our “law of relativity”? And if there were not this accord, should
we not have also the right to say experience had proven the falsity of the
non-Euclidean geometry? It is easy to see that this is an idle fear; in fact,
to apply the law of relativity in all rigor, it must be applied to the entire
universe. For if only a part of this universe were considered, and if the
absolute position of this part happened to vary, the distances to the other
bodies of the universe would likewise vary, their influence on the part
of the universe considered would consequently augment or diminish,
which might modify the laws of the phenomena happening there.
But if our system is the entire universe, experience is powerless to
give information about its absolute position and orientation in space.
All that our instruments, however perfected they may be, can tell us will
be the state of the various parts of the universe and their mutual distances.
So our law of relativity may be thus enunciated: The readings we
shall be able to make on our instruments at any instant will depend only
on the readings we could have made on these same instruments at the
initial instant. Now such an enunciation is independent of every
interpretation of experimental facts. If the law is true in the Euclidean
interpretation, it will also be true in the non-Euclidean interpretation.
Allow me here a short digression. I have spoken above of the data
which define the position of the various bodies of the system; I should
likewise have spoken of those which define their velocities; I should
then have had to distinguish the velocities with which the mutual
distances of the different bodies vary; and, on the other hand, the
velocities of translation and rotation of the system, that is to say, the
velocities with which its absolute position and orientation vary.
To fully satisfy the mind, the law of relativity should be expressible
288 Henri Poincaré

thus: The state of bodies and their mutual distances at any instant, as
well as the velocities with which these distances vary at this same instant,
will depend only on the state of those bodies and their mutual distances
at the initial instant, and the velocities with which these distances vary
at this initial instant, but they will not depend either upon the absolute
initial position of the system, or upon its absolute orientation, or upon
the velocities with which this absolute position and orientation varied
at the initial instant.
Unhappily the law thus enunciated is not in accord with experiments,
at least as they are ordinarily interpreted. Suppose a man be transported
to a planet whose heavens were always covered with a thick curtain of
clouds, so that he could never see the other stars; on that planet he
would live as if it were isolated in space. Yet this man could become aware
that it turned, either by measuring its oblateness (done ordinarily by the
aid of astronomic observations, but capable of being done by purely
geodetic means), or by repeating the experiment of Foucault’s pendulum.
The absolute rotation of this planet could therefore be made evident.
That is a fact which shocks the philosopher, but which the physicist
is compelled to accept. We know that from this fact Newton inferred the
existence of absolute space; I myself am quite unable to adopt this
view. . . . For the moment it is not my intention to enter upon this
difficulty. Therefore I must resign myself, in the enunciation of the law
of relativity, to including velocities of every kind among the data which
define the state of the bodies. However that may be, this difficulty is the
same for Euclid’s geometry as for Lobachevski’s; I therefore need not
trouble myself with it, and have only mentioned it incidentally.
What is important is the conclusion: experiment cannot decide
between Euclid and Lobachevski. To sum up, whichever way we look at
it, it is impossible to discover in geometric empiricism a rational meaning.
6. Experiments only teach us the relations of bodies to one another;
none of them bears or can bear on the relations of bodies with space, or
on the mutual relations of different parts of space.
“Yes,” you reply, “a single experiment is insufficient, because it gives
me only a single equation with several unknowns; but when I shall have
made enough experiments I shall have equations enough to calculate all
my unknowns.”
To know the height of the mainmast does not suffice for calculating the
age of the captain. When you have measured every bit of wood in the
ship you will have many equations, but you will know his age no better.
All your measurements bearing only on your bits of wood can reveal to
 S PAC E 289

you nothing except concerning these bits of wood. Just so your

experiments, however numerous they may be, bearing only on the
relations of bodies to one another, will reveal to us nothing about the
mutual relations of the various parts of space.
7. Will you say that if the experiments bear on the bodies, they bear at
least upon the geometric properties of the bodies? But, first, what do
you understand by geometric properties of the bodies? I assume that it is
a question of the relations of the bodies with space; these properties are
therefore inaccessible to experiments which bear only on the relations of
the bodies to one another. This alone would suffice to show that there
can be no question of these properties.
Still let us begin by coming to an understanding about the sense of
the phrase: geometric properties of bodies. When I say a body is
composed of several parts, I assume that I do not enunciate therein a
geometric property, and this would remain true even if I agreed to give
the improper name of points to the smallest parts I consider. When I
say that such a part of such a body is in contact with such a part of
such another body, I enunciate a proposition which concerns the mutual
relations of these two bodies and not their relations with space. I suppose
you will grant me these are not geometric properties; at least I am sure
you will grant me these properties are independent of all knowledge of
metric geometry.
This presupposed, I imagine that we have a solid body formed of
eight slender iron rods, OA, OB, OC, OD, OE, OF, OG, OH, united at
one of their extremities O. Let us besides have a second solid body, for
example a bit of wood, to be marked with three little flecks of ink which
I shall call α, β, γ. I further suppose it ascertained that αβγ may be
brought into contact with AGO (I mean α with A, and at the same time
β with G and γ with O), then that we may bring successively into contact
αβγ with BGO, CGO, DGO, EGO, FGO, then with AHO, BHO, CHO,
DHO, EHO, FHO, then αγ successively with AB, BC, CD, DE, EF, FA.
These are determinations we may make without having in advance
any notion about form or about the metric properties of space. They in
nowise bear on the “geometric properties of bodies.” And these
determinations will not be possible if the bodies experimented upon
move in accordance with a group having the same structure as the
Lobachevskian group (I mean according to the same laws as solid bodies
in Lobachevski’s geometry). They suffice therefore to prove that these
bodies move in accordance with the Euclidean group, or at least that
they do not move according to the Lobachevskian group.
290 Henri Poincaré

That they are compatible with the Euclidean group is easy to see. For
they could be made if the body αβγ was a rigid solid of our ordinary
geometry presenting the form of a right-angled triangle, and if the points
ABCDEFGH were the summits of a polyhedron formed of two regular
hexagonal pyramids of our ordinary geometry, having for common base
ABCDEF and for apices the one G and the other H.
Suppose now that in place of the preceding determination it is observed
that as above αβγ can be successively applied to AGO, BGO, CGO, DGO,
EGO, AHO, BHO, CHO, DHO, EHO, FHO, then that αβ (and no longer
αγ) can be successively applied to AB, BC, CD, DE, EF and FA.
These are determinations which could be made if non-Euclidean
geometry were true, if the bodies αβγ and OABCDEFGH were rigid
solids, and if the first were a right-angled triangle and the second a
double regular hexagonal pyramid of suitable dimensions. Therefore
these new determinations are not possible if the bodies move according
to the Euclidean group; but they become so if it be supposed that the
bodies move according to the Lobachevskian group. They would suffice,
therefore (if one made them), to prove that the bodies in question do not
move according to the Euclidean group.
Thus, without making any hypothesis about form, about the nature
of space, about the relations of bodies to space, and without attributing
to bodies any geometric property, I have made observations which have
enabled me to show in one case that the bodies experimented upon move
according to a group whose structure is Euclidean, in the other case that
they move according to a group whose structure is Lobachevskian.
And one may not say that the first aggregate of determinations would
constitute an experiment proving that space is Euclidean, and the second
an experiment proving that space is non-Euclidean. In fact one could
imagine (I say imagine) bodies moving so as to render possible the second
series of determinations. And the proof is that the first mechanician met
could construct such bodies if he cared to take the pains and make the
outlay. You will not conclude from that, however, that space is non-
Euclidean. Nay, since the ordinary solid bodies would continue to exist
when the mechanician had constructed the strange bodies of which I
have just spoken, it would be necessary to conclude that space is at the
same time Euclidean and non-Euclidean.
Suppose, for example, that we have a great sphere of radius R and that
the temperature decreases from the center to the surface of this sphere
according to the law of which I have spoken in describing the non-
Euclidean world. We might have bodies whose expansion would be neg-
 S PAC E 291

ligible and which would act like ordinary rigid solids; and, on the other
hand, bodies very dilatable and which would act like non-Euclidean
solids. We might have two double pyramids OABC DE FG H and
O′A′B′C′D′E′F′G′H′ and two triangles αβγ and α′β′γ′. The first double
pyramid might be rectilinear and the second curvilinear; the triangle
αβγ might be made of inexpansible matter and the other of a very dilatable
matter. It would then be possible to make the first observations with the
double pyramid OAH and the triangle αβγ, and the second with the
double pyramid O′A′H′ and the triangle α′β′γ′. And then experiment
would seem to prove first that the Euclidean geometry is true and then
that it is false. Experiments therefore have a bearing, not on space, but on bodies.

SUPPLEMENT

8. To complete the matter, I ought to speak of a very delicate question,

which would require long development; I shall confine myself to
summarizing here what I have expounded in the Revue de Métaphysique et
de Morale and in The Monist. When we say space has three dimensions,
what do we mean?
We have seen the importance of those “internal changes” revealed to
us by our muscular sensations. They may serve to characterize the various
attitudes of our body. Take arbitrarily as origin one of these attitudes A.
When we pass from this initial attitude to any other attitude B, we feel a
series of muscular sensations, and this series S will define B. Observe,
however, that we shall often regard two series S and S′ as defining the
same attitude B (since the initial and final attitudes A and B remaining
the same, the intermediary attitudes and the corresponding sensations
may differ). How then shall we recognize the equivalence of these two
series? Because they may serve to compensate the same external change,
or more generally because, when it is a question of compensating an
external change, one of the series can be replaced by the other. Among
these series, we have distinguished those which of themselves alone can
compensate an external change, and which we have called “displace-
ments.” As we cannot discriminate between two displacements which
are too close together, the totality of these displacements presents the
characteristics of a physical continuum; experience teaches us that they
are those of a physical continuum of six dimensions; but we do not yet
know how many dimensions space itself has, we must first solve another
question.
What is a point of space? Everybody thinks he knows, but that is an
292 Henri Poincaré

illusion. What we see when we try to represent to ourselves a point of

space is a black speck on white paper, a speck of chalk on a blackboard,
always an object. The question should therefore be understood as follows:
What do I mean when I say the object B is at the same point that the
object A occupied just now? Or further, what criterion will enable me to
apprehend this?
I mean that, although I have not budged (which my muscular sense tells
me), my first finger which just now touched the object A touches at
present the object B. I could have used other criteria; for instance another
finger or the sense of sight. But the first criterion is sufficient; I know
that if it answers yes, all the other criteria will give the same response. I
know it by experience, I cannot know it a priori. For the same reason I say
that touch cannot be exercised at a distance; this is another way of
enunciating the same experimental fact. And if, on the contrary, I say
that sight acts at a distance, it means that the criterion furnished by
sight may respond yes while the others reply no. And in fact, the object
although moved away may form its image at the same point of the retina.
Sight responds yes, the object has remained at the same point and touch
answers no, because my finger which just now touched the object at
present touches it no longer. If experience had shown us that one finger
may respond no when the other says yes, we should likewise say that
touch acts at a distance.
In short, for each attitude of my body, my first finger determines a
point, and this it is, and this alone, which defines a point of space. To
each attitude corresponds thus a point; but it often happens that the
same point corresponds to several different attitudes (in this case we say
our finger has not budged, but the rest of the body has moved). We
distinguish, therefore, among the changes of attitude those where the
finger does not budge. How are we led thereto? It is because often we
notice that in these changes the object which is in contact with the
finger remains in contact with it.
Range, therefore, in the same class all the attitudes obtainable from
each other by one of the changes we have thus distinguished. To all the
attitudes of the class will correspond the same point of space. Therefore
to each class will correspond a point and to each point a class. But one
may say that what experience arrives at is not the point, it is this class of
changes or, better, the corresponding class of muscular sensations. And
when we say space has three dimensions, we simply mean that the totality
of these classes appears to us with the characteristics of a physical
continuum of three dimensions.
 S PAC E 293

One might be tempted to conclude that it is experience which has

taught us how many dimensions space has. But in reality here also our
experiences have bearing, not on space, but on our body and its relations
with the neighboring objects. Moreover they are excessively crude.
In our mind pre-existed the latent idea of a certain number of groups—
those whose theory Lie has developed. Which group shall we choose, to
make of it a sort of standard with which to compare natural phenomena?
And, this group chosen, which of its sub-groups shall we take to
characterize a point of space? Experience has guided us by showing us
which choice best adapts itself to the properties of our body. But its role
is limited to that.

ANCESTRAL EXPERIENCE

It has often been said that if individual experience could not create
geometry the same is not true of ancestral experience. But what does
that mean? Is it meant that we could not experimentally demonstrate
Euclid’s postulate, but that our ancestors have been able to do it? Not in
the least. It is meant that by natural selection our mind has adapted itself
to the conditions of the external world, that it has adopted the geometry
most advantageous to the species: or in other words the most convenient. This
is entirely in conformity with our conclusions; geometry is not true, it is
advantageous.

The foregoing essay comprises Chapters III–V

from Henri Poincaré’s SCIENCE AND HYPOTHESIS,
translated by George B. Halsted.
 Mathematical Creation

he genesis of mathematical creation is a problem which should

intensely interest the psychologist. It is the activity in which the human
mind seems to take least from the outside world, in which it acts or
seems to act only of itself and on itself, so that in studying the procedure
of geometric thought we may hope to reach what is most essential in
man’s mind.
This has long been appreciated, and some time back the journal called
L’enseignement mathématique, edited by Laisant and Fehr, began an
investigation of the mental habits and methods of work of different
mathematicians. I had finished the main outlines of this article when
the results of that inquiry were published, so I have hardly been able to
utilize them and shall confine myself to saying that the majority of
witnesses confirm my conclusions; I do not say all, for when the appeal
is to universal suffrage unanimity is not to be hoped.
A first fact should surprise us, or rather would surprise us if we were
not so used to it. How does it happen there are people who do not
understand mathematics? If mathematics invokes only the rules of logic,
such as are accepted by all normal minds; if its evidence is based on
principles common to all men, and that none could deny without being
mad, how does it come about that so many persons are here refractory?
That not everyone can invent is nowise mysterious. That not everyone
can retain a demonstration once learned may also pass. But that not
everyone can understand mathematical reasoning when explained appears
very surprising when we think of it. And yet those who can follow this
reasoning only with difficulty are in the majority: that is undeniable,
and will surely not be gainsaid by the experience of secondary-school
teachers.
And further: how is error possible in mathematics? A sane mind should
not be guilty of a logical fallacy, and yet there are very fine minds who do
not trip in brief reasoning such as occurs in the ordinary doings of life,
294
 MATH E MATICAL CREATION 295

and who are incapable of following or repeating without error the

mathematical demonstrations which are longer, but which after all are
only an accumulation of brief reasonings wholly analogous to those they
make so easily. Need we add that mathematicians themselves are not
infallible?
The answer seems to me evident. Imagine a long series of syllogisms,
and that the conclusions of the first serve as premises of the following:
we shall be able to catch each of these syllogisms, and it is not in passing
from premises to conclusion that we are in danger of deceiving ourselves.
But between the moment in which we first meet a proposition as
conclusion of one syllogism, and that in which we re-encounter it as
premise of another syllogism occasionally some time will elapse, several
links of the chain will have unrolled; so it may happen that we have
forgotten it, or worse, that we have forgotten its meaning. So it may
happen that we replace it by a slightly different proposition, or that,
while retaining the same enunciation, we attribute to it a slightly different
meaning, and thus it is that we are exposed to error.
Often the mathematician uses a rule. Naturally he begins by
demonstrating this rule; and at the time when this proof is fresh in his
memory he understands perfectly its meaning and its bearing, and he is
in no danger of changing it. But subsequently he trusts his memory and
afterward only applies it in a mechanical way; and then if his memory
fails him, he may apply it all wrong. Thus it is, to take a simple example,
that we sometimes make slips in calculation because we have forgotten
our multiplication table.
According to this, the special aptitude for mathematics would be due
only to a very sure memory or to a prodigious force of attention. It
would be a power like that of the whist player who remembers the cards
played; or, to go up a step, like that of the chess player who can visualize
a great number of combinations and hold them in his memory. Every
good mathematician ought to be a good chess player, and inversely;
likewise he should be a good computer. Of course that sometimes happens;
thus Gauss was at the same time a geometer of genius and a very
precocious and accurate computer.
But there are exceptions, or rather I err: I cannot call them exceptions
without the exceptions being more than the rule. Gauss it is, on the
contrary, who was an exception. As for myself, I must confess, I am
absolutely incapable even of adding without mistakes. In the same way I
should be but a poor chess player; I would perceive that by a certain play
I should expose myself to a certain danger; I would pass in review several
296 Henri Poincaré

other plays, rejecting them for other reasons, and then finally I should
make the move first examined, having meantime forgotten the danger I
had foreseen.
In a word, my memory is not bad, but it would be insufficient to
make me a good chess player. Why then does it not fail me in a difficult
piece of mathematical reasoning where most chess players would lose
themselves? Evidently because it is guided by the general march of the
reasoning. A mathematical demonstration is not a simple juxtaposition
of syllogisms, it is syllogisms placed in a certain order, and the order in
which these elements are placed is much more important than the elements
themselves. If I have the feeling, the intuition, so to speak, of this order,
so as to perceive at a glance the reasoning as a whole, I need no longer
fear lest I forget one of the elements, for each of them will take its allotted
place in the array, and that without any effort of memory on my part.
It seems to me then, in repeating a reasoning learned, that I could
have invented it. This is often only an illusion; but even then, even if I
am not so gifted as to create it by myself, I myself reinvent it in so far as
I repeat it.
We know that this feeling, this intuition of mathematical order, that
makes us divine hidden harmonies and relations, cannot be possessed
by everyone. Some will not have either this delicate feeling so difficult
to define, or a strength of memory and attention beyond the ordinary,
and then they will be absolutely incapable of understanding higher
mathematics. Such are the majority. Others will have this feeling only in
a slight degree, but they will be gifted with an uncommon memory and
a great power of attention. They will learn by heart the details one after
another; they can understand mathematics and sometimes make
applications, but they cannot create. Others, finally, will possess in a
less or greater degree the special intuition referred to, and then not only
can they understand mathematics even if their memory is nothing
extraordinary, but they may become creators and try to invent with more
or less success according as this intuition is more or less developed in
them.
In fact, what is mathematical creation? It does not consist in making
new combinations with mathematical entities already known. Anyone
could do that, but the combinations so made would be infinite in number
and most of them absolutely without interest. To create consists precisely
in not making useless combinations and in making those which are useful
and which are only a small minority. Invention is discernment, choice.
How to make this choice I have before explained; the mathematical
 MATH E MATICAL CREATION 297

facts worthy of being studied are those which, by their analogy with
other facts, are capable of leading us to the knowledge of a mathematical
law just as experimental facts lead us to the knowledge of a physical law.
They are those which reveal to us unsuspected kinship between other
facts, long known, but wrongly believed to be strangers to one another.
Among chosen combinations the most fertile will often be those formed
of elements drawn from domains which are far apart. Not that I mean as
sufficing for invention the bringing together of objects as disparate as
possible; most combinations so formed would be entirely sterile. But
certain among them, very rare, are the most fruitful of all.
To invent, I have said, is to choose; but the word is perhaps not
wholly exact. It makes one think of a purchaser before whom are displayed
a large number of samples, and who examines them, one after the other,
to make a choice. Here the samples would be so numerous that a whole
lifetime would not suffice to examine them. This is not the actual state
of things. The sterile combinations do not even present themselves to
the mind of the inventor. Never in the field of his consciousness do
combinations appear that are not really useful, except some that he rejects
but which have to some extent the characteristics of useful combinations.
All goes on as if the inventor were an examiner for the second degree
who would only have to question the candidates who had passed a
previous examination.
But what I have hitherto said is what may be observed or inferred in
reading the writings of the geometers, reading reflectively.
It is time to penetrate deeper and to see what goes on in the very soul
of the mathematician. For this, I believe, I can do best by recalling
memories of my own. But I shall limit myself to telling how I wrote my
first memoir on Fuchsian functions. I beg the reader’s pardon; I am
about to use some technical expressions, but they need not frighten him,
for he is not obliged to understand them. I shall say, for example, that I
have found the demonstration of such a theorem under such
circumstances. This theorem will have a barbarous name, unfamiliar to
many, but that is unimportant; what is of interest for the psychologist is
not the theorem but the circumstances.
For fifteen days I strove to prove that there could not be any functions
like those I have since called Fuchsian functions. I was then very
ignorant; every day I seated myself at my work-table, stayed an hour or
two, tried a great number of combinations and reached no results. One
evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and could not sleep.
Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to
298 Henri Poincaré

speak, making a stable combination. By the next morning I had

established the existence of a class of Fuchsian functions, those which
come from the hypergeometric series; I had only to write out the results,
which took but a few hours.
Then I wanted to represent these functions by the quotient of two
series; this idea was perfectly conscious and deliberate, the analogy with
elliptic functions guided me. I asked myself what properties these series
must have if they existed, and I succeeded without difficulty in forming
the series I have called theta-Fuchsian.
Just at this time I left Caen, where I was then living, to go on a
geological excursion under the auspices of the School of Mines. The
changes of travel made me forget my mathematical work. Having reached
Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go some place or other. At the
moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without
anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it,
that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions
were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry. I did not verify
the idea; I should not have had time, as, upon taking my seat in the
omnibus, I went on with a conversation already commenced, but I felt a
perfect certainty. On my return to Caen, for conscience’ sake I verified
the result at my leisure.
Then I turned my attention to the study of some arithmetic questions
apparently without much success and without a suspicion of any
connection with my preceding researches. Disgusted with my failure, I
went to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought of something else.
One morning, walking on the bluff, the idea came to me, with just the
same characteristics of brevity, suddenness and immediate certainty, that
the arithmetic transformations of indeterminate ternary quadratic forms
were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry.
Returned to Caen, I meditated on this result and deduced the
consequences. The example of quadratic forms showed me that there were
Fuchsian groups other than those corresponding to the hypergeometric
series; I saw that I could apply to them the theory of theta-Fuchsian series
and that consequently there existed Fuchsian functions other than those
from the hypergeometric series, the ones I then knew. Naturally I set
myself to form all these functions. I made a systematic attack upon them
and carried all the outworks one after another. There was one however
that still held out, whose fall would involve that of the whole place. But
all my efforts only served at first the better to show me the difficulty,
which indeed was something. All this work was perfectly conscious.
 MATH E MATICAL CREATION 299

Thereupon I left for Mont-Valérien, where I was to go through my

military service; so I was very differently occupied. One day, going along
the street, the solution of the difficulty which had stopped me suddenly
appeared to me. I did not try to go deep into it immediately, and only
after my service did I again take up the question. I had all the elements
and had only to arrange them and put them together. So I wrote out my
final memoir at a single stroke and without difficulty.
I shall limit myself to this single example; it is useless to multiply
them. In regard to my other researches I would have to say analogous
things, and the observations of other mathematicians given in
L’enseignement mathématique would only confirm them.
Most striking at first is this appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest
sign of long, unconscious prior work. The role of this unconscious work
in mathematical invention appears to me incontestable, and traces of it
would be found in other cases where it is less evident. Often when one
works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack.
Then one takes a rest, longer or shorter, and sits down anew to the work.
During the first half-hour, as before, nothing is found, and then all of a
sudden the decisive idea presents itself to the mind. It might be said that
the conscious work has been more fruitful because it has been interrupted
and the rest has given back to the mind its force and freshness. But it is
more probable that this rest has been filled out with unconscious work
and that the result of this work has afterwards revealed itself to the geometer
just as in the cases I have cited; only the revelation, instead of coming
during a walk or a journey, has happened during a period of conscious
work, but independently of this work which plays at most a role of excitant,
as if it were the goad stimulating the results already reached during rest,
but remaining unconscious, to assume the conscious form.
There is another remark to be made about the conditions of this
unconscious work: it is possible, and of a certainty it is only fruitful, if
it is on the one hand preceded and on the other hand followed by a
period of conscious work. These sudden inspirations (and the examples
already cited sufficiently prove this) never happen except after some days
of voluntary effort which has appeared absolutely fruitless and whence
nothing good seems to have come, where the way taken seems totally
astray. These efforts then have not been as sterile as one thinks; they
have set agoing the unconscious machine and without them it would
not have moved and would have produced nothing.
The need for the second period of conscious work, after the inspiration,
is still easier to understand. It is necessary to put in shape the results of
this inspiration, to deduce from them the immediate consequences, to
300 Henri Poincaré

arrange them, to word the demonstrations, but above all is verification

necessary. I have spoken of the feeling of absolute certitude
accompanying the inspiration; in the cases cited this feeling was no
deceiver, nor is it usually. But do not think this a rule without exception;
often this feeling deceives us without being any the less vivid, and we
only find it out when we seek to put on foot the demonstration. I have
especially noticed this fact in regard to ideas coming to me in the morning
or evening in bed while in a semi-hypnagogic state.
Such are the realities; now for the thoughts they force upon us. The
unconscious, or, as we say, the subliminal self plays an important role in
mathematical creation; this follows from what we have said. But usually
the subliminal self is considered as purely automatic. Now we have seen
that mathematical work is not simply mechanical, that it could not be
done by a machine, however perfect. It is not merely a question of applying
rules, of making the most combinations possible according to certain
fixed laws. The combinations so obtained would be exceedingly
numerous, useless and cumbersome. The true work of the inventor
consists in choosing among these combinations so as to eliminate the
useless ones or rather to avoid the trouble of making them, and the rules
which must guide this choice are extremely fine and delicate. It is almost
impossible to state them precisely; they are felt rather than formulated.
Under these conditions, how imagine a sieve capable of applying them
mechanically?
A first hypothesis now presents itself: the subliminal self is in no way
inferior to the conscious self; it is not purely automatic; it is capable of
discernment; it has tact, delicacy; it knows how to choose, to divine.
What do I say? It knows better how to divine than the conscious self,
since it succeeds where that has failed. In a word, is not the subliminal
self superior to the conscious self? You recognize the full importance of
this question. Boutroux in a recent lecture has shown how it came up
on a very different occasion, and what consequences would follow an
affirmative answer. (See also, by the same author, Science et Religion, pp.
313 ff.)
Is this affirmative answer forced upon us by the facts I have just given?
I confess that, for my part, I should hate to accept it. Re-examine the
facts then and see if they are not compatible with another explanation.
It is certain that the combinations which present themselves to the mind
in a sort of sudden illumination, after an unconscious working somewhat
prolonged, are generally useful and fertile combinations, which seem the
result of a first impression. Does it follow that the subliminal self, having
 MATH E MATICAL CREATION 301

divined by a delicate intuition that these combinations would be useful,

has formed only these, or has it rather formed many others which were
lacking in interest and have remained unconscious?
In this second way of looking at it, all the combinations would be
formed in consequence of the automatism of the subliminal self, but
only the interesting ones would break into the domain of consciousness.
And this is still very mysterious. What is the cause that, among the
thousand products of our unconscious activity, some are called to pass
the threshold, while others remain below? Is it a simple chance which
confers this privilege? Evidently not; among all the stimuli of our senses,
for example, only the most intense fix our attention, unless it has been
drawn to them by other causes. More generally the privileged unconscious
phenomena, those susceptible of becoming conscious, are those which,
directly or indirectly, affect most profoundly our emotional sensibility.
It may be surprising to see emotional sensibility invoked à propos of
mathematical demonstrations which, it would seem, can interest only
the intellect. This would be to forget the feeling of mathematical beauty,
of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric elegance. This is a
true esthetic feeling that all real mathematicians know, and surely it
belongs to emotional sensibility.
Now, what are the mathematic entities to which we attribute this
character of beauty and elegance, and which are capable of developing
in us a sort of esthetic emotion? They are those whose elements are
harmoniously disposed so that the mind without effort can embrace their
totality while realizing the details. This harmony is at once a satisfaction
of our esthetic needs and an aid to the mind, sustaining and guiding.
And at the same time, in putting under our eyes a well-ordered whole,
it makes us foresee a mathematical law. Now, as we have said above, the
only mathematical facts worthy of fixing our attention and capable of
being useful are those which can teach us a mathematical law. So that
we reach the following conclusion: The useful combinations are precisely
the most beautiful, I mean those best able to charm this special sensibility
that all mathematicians know, but of which the profane are so ignorant
as often to be tempted to smile at it.
What happens then? Among the great numbers of combinations blindly
formed by the subliminal self, almost all are without interest and without
utility; but just for that reason they are also without effect upon the
esthetic sensibility. Consciousness will never know them; only certain
ones are harmonious, and, consequently, at once useful and beautiful.
They will be capable of touching this special sensibility of the geometer of
302 Henri Poincaré

which I have just spoken, and which, once aroused, will call our attention
to them, and thus give them occasion to become conscious.
This is only a hypothesis, and yet here is an observation which may
confirm it: when a sudden illumination seizes upon the mind of the
mathematician, it usually happens that it does not deceive him, but it
also sometimes happens, as I have said, that it does not stand the test of
verification; well, we almost always notice that this false idea, had it
been true, would have gratified our natural feeling for mathematical
elegance.
Thus it is this special esthetic sensibility which plays the role of the
delicate sieve of which I spoke, and that sufficiently explains why the
one lacking it will never be a real creator.
Yet all the difficulties have not disappeared. The conscious self is
narrowly limited, and as for the subliminal self we know not its
limitations, and this is why we are not too reluctant in supposing that it
has been able in a short time to make more different combinations than
the whole life of a conscious being could encompass. Yet these limitations
exist. Is it likely that it is able to form all the possible combinations,
whose number would frighten the imagination? Nevertheless that would
seem necessary, because if it produces only a small part of these
combinations, and if it makes them at random, there would be small chance
that the good, the one we should choose, would be found among them.
Perhaps we ought to seek the explanation in that preliminary period
of conscious work which always precedes all fruitful unconscious labor.
Permit me a rough comparison. Figure the future elements of our
combinations as something like the hooked atoms of Epicurus. During
the complete repose of the mind, these atoms are motionless, they are, so
to speak, hooked to the wall; so this complete rest may be indefinitely
prolonged without the atoms meeting, and consequently without any
combination between them.
On the other hand, during a period of apparent rest and unconscious
work, certain of them are detached from the wall and put in motion.
They flash in every direction through the space (I was about to say the
room) where they are enclosed, as would, for example, a swarm of gnats
or, if you prefer a more learned comparison, like the molecules of gas in
the kinematic theory of gases. Then their mutual impacts may produce
new combinations.
What is the role of the preliminary conscious work? It is evidently to
mobilize certain of these atoms, to unhook them from the wall and put
them in swing. We think we have done no good, because we have moved
 MATH E MATICAL CREATION 303

these elements a thousand different ways in seeking to assemble them,

and have found no satisfactory aggregate. But, after this shaking up
imposed upon them by our will, these atoms do not return to their
primitive rest. They freely continue their dance.
Now, our will did not choose them at random; it pursued a perfectly
determined aim. The mobilized atoms are therefore not any atoms
whatsoever; they are those from which we might reasonably expect the
desired solution. Then the mobilized atoms undergo impacts which make
them enter into combinations among themselves or with other atoms at
rest which they struck against in their course. Again I beg pardon, my
comparison is very rough, but I scarcely know how otherwise to make
my thought understood.
However it may be, the only combinations that have a chance of
forming are those where at least one of the elements is one of those
atoms freely chosen by our will. Now, it is evidently among these that is
found what I called the good combination. Perhaps this is a way of lessening
the paradoxical in the original hypothesis.
Another observation. It never happens that the unconscious work
gives us the result of a somewhat long calculation all made, where we
have only to apply fixed rules. We might think the wholly automatic
subliminal self particularly apt for this sort of work, which is in a way
exclusively mechanical. It seems that thinking in the evening upon the
factors of a multiplication we might hope to find the product ready made
upon our awakening, or again that an algebraic calculation, for example
a verification, would be made unconsciously. Nothing of the sort, as
observation proves. All one may hope from these inspirations, fruits of
unconscious work, is a point of departure for such calculations. As for
the calculations themselves, they must be made in the second period of
conscious work, that which follows the inspiration, that in which one
verifies the results of this inspiration and deduces their consequences.
The rules of these calculations are strict and complicated. They require
discipline, attention, will, and therefore consciousness. In the subliminal
self, on the contrary, reigns what I should call liberty, if we might give
this name to the simple absence of discipline and to the disorder born of
chance. Only, this disorder itself permits unexpected combinations.
I shall make a last remark: when above I made certain personal
observations, I spoke of a night of excitement when I worked in spite of
myself. Such cases are frequent, and it is not necessary that the abnormal
cerebral activity be caused by a physical excitant as in that I mentioned.
It seems, in such cases, that one is present at his own unconscious work,
304 Henri Poincaré

made partially perceptible to the over-excited consciousness, yet without

having changed its nature. Then we vaguely comprehend what
distinguishes the two mechanisms or, if you wish, the working methods
of the two egos. And the psychologic observations I have been able thus
to make seem to me to confirm in their general outlines the views I have
given.
Surely they have need of it, for they are and remain in spite of all
very hypothetical: the interest of the questions is so great that I do not
repent of having submitted them to the reader.
 Chance

ow dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the

antithesis of all law?” So says Bertrand at the beginning of his Calcul des
probabilités. Probability is opposed to certitude; so it is what we do not
know and consequently it seems what we could not calculate. Here is at
least apparently a contradiction, and about it much has already been
written.
And first, what is chance? The ancients distinguished between
phenomena seemingly obeying harmonious laws, established once for
all, and those which they attributed to chance; these were the ones
unpredictable because rebellious to all law. In each domain the precise
laws did not decide everything, they only drew limits between which
chance might act. In this conception the word chance had a precise and
objective meaning; what was chance for one was also chance for another
and even for the gods.
But this conception is not ours today. We have become absolute
determinists, and even those who want to reserve the rights of human
free will let determinism reign undividedly in the inorganic world at
least. Every phenomenon, however minute, has a cause; and a mind
infinitely powerful, infinitely well informed about the laws of nature,
could have foreseen it from the beginning of the centuries. If such a
mind existed, we could not play with it at any game of chance; we
should always lose.
In fact for it the word chance would not have any meaning, or rather
there would be no chance. It is because of our weakness and our ignorance
that the word has a meaning for us. And, even without going beyond
our feeble humanity, what is chance for the ignorant is not chance for
the scientist. Chance is only the measure of our ignorance. Fortuitous
phenomena are, by definition, those whose laws we do not know.
But is this definition altogether satisfactory? When the first Chaldean
shepherds followed with their eyes the movements of the stars, they knew
305
306 Henri Poincaré

not as yet the laws of astronomy; would they have dreamed of saying
that the stars move at random? If a modern physicist studies a new
phenomenon, and if he discovers its law Tuesday, would he have said
Monday that this phenomenon was fortuitous? Moreover, do we not
often invoke what Bertrand calls the laws of chance, to predict a
phenomenon? For example, in the kinetic theory of gases we obtain the
known laws of Mariotte and of Gay-Lussac by means of the hypothesis
that the velocities of the molecules of gas vary irregularly, that is to say
at random. All physicists will agree that the observable laws would be
much less simple if the velocities were ruled by any simple elementary
law whatsoever, if the molecules were, as we say, organized, if they were
subject to some discipline. It is due to chance, that is to say, to our
ignorance, that we can draw our conclusions; and then if the word
chance is simply synonymous with ignorance what does that mean? Must
we therefore translate as follows?
“You ask me to predict for you the phenomena about to happen. If,
unluckily, I knew the laws of these phenomena I could make the
prediction only by inextricable calculations and would have to renounce
attempting to answer you; but as I have the good fortune not to know
them, I will answer you at once. And what is most surprising, my answer
will be right.”
So it must well be that chance is something other than the name we
give our ignorance, that among phenomena whose causes are unknown
to us we must distinguish fortuitous phenomena about which the calculus
of probabilities will provisionally give information, from those which
are not fortuitous and of which we can say nothing so long as we shall
not have determined the laws governing them. For the fortuitous
phenomena themselves, it is clear that the information given us by the
calculus of probabilities will not cease to be true upon the day when
these phenomena shall be better known.
The director of a life insurance company does not know when each of
the insured will die, but he relies upon the calculus of probabilities and
on the law of great numbers, and he is not deceived, since he distributes
dividends to his stockholders. These dividends would not vanish if a
very penetrating and very indiscreet physician should, after the policies
were signed, reveal to the director the life chances of the insured. This
doctor would dissipate the ignorance of the director, but he would have
no influence on the dividends, which evidently are not an outcome of
this ignorance.
 CHANCE 307

To find a better definition of chance we must examine some of the

facts which we agree to regard as fortuitous, and to which the calculus
of probabilities seems to apply; we then shall investigate what are their
common characteristics.
The first example we select is that of unstable equilibrium; if a cone
rests upon its apex, we know well that it will fall, but we do not know
toward what side; it seems to us chance alone will decide. If the cone
were perfectly symmetric, if its axis were perfectly vertical, if it were
acted upon by no force other than gravity, it would not fall at all. But
the least defect in symmetry will make it lean slightly toward one side or
the other, and if it leans, however little, it will fall altogether toward
that side. Even if the symmetry were perfect, a very slight tremor, a
breath of air could make it incline some seconds of arc; this will be
enough to determine its fall and even the sense of its fall which will be
that of the initial inclination.
A very slight cause, which escapes us, determines a considerable effect
which we cannot help seeing, and then we say this effect is due to chance.
If we could know exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the
universe at the initial instant, we should be able to predict exactly the
situation of this same universe at a subsequent instant. But even when
the natural laws should have no further secret for us, we could know
the initial situation only approximately. If that permits us to foresee the
subsequent situation with the same degree of approximation, this is all we
require, we say the phenomenon has been predicted, that it is ruled by
laws. But this is not always the case; it may happen that slight differences
in the initial conditions produce very great differences in the final
phenomena; a slight error in the former would make an enormous error
in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible and we have the fortuitous
phenomenon.
Our second example will be very analogous to the first and we shall
take it from meteorology. Why have the meteorologists such difficulty
in predicting the weather with any certainty? Why do the rains, the
tempests themselves seem to us to come by chance, so that many persons
find it quite natural to pray for rain or shine, when they would think it
ridiculous to pray for an eclipse? We see that great perturbations generally
happen in regions where the atmosphere is in unstable equilibrium. The
meteorologists are aware that this equilibrium is unstable, that a cyclone
is arising somewhere; but where they cannot tell; one-tenth of a degree
more or less at any point, and the cyclone bursts here and not there, and
308 Henri Poincaré

spreads its ravages over countries it would have spared. This we could
have foreseen if we had known that tenth of a degree, but the observations
were neither sufficiently close nor sufficiently precise, and for this reason
all seems due to the agency of chance. Here again we find the same
contrast between a very slight cause, unappreciable to the observer, and
important effects, which are sometimes tremendous disasters.
Let us pass to another example, the distribution of the minor planets
on the zodiac. Their initial longitudes may have been any longitudes
whatever; but their mean motions were different and they have revolved
for so long a time that we may say they are now distributed at random
along the zodiac. Very slight initial differences between their distances
from the sun, or, what comes to the same thing, between their mean
motions, have ended by giving enormous differences between their present
longitudes. An excess of the thousandth of a second in the daily mean
motion will give in fact a second in three years, a degree in ten thousand
years, an entire circumference in three or four million years, and what
is that to the time which has passed since the minor planets detached
themselves from the nebula of Laplace? Again therefore we see a slight
cause and a great effect; or better, slight differences in the cause and
great differences in the effect.
The game of roulette does not take us as far as might seem from the
preceding example. Assume a needle to be turned on a pivot over a dial
divided into a hundred sectors alternately red and black. If it stops on a
red sector I win; if not, I lose. Evidently all depends upon the initial
impulse I give the needle. The needle will make, suppose, ten or twenty
turns, but it will stop sooner or not so soon, according as I shall have
pushed it more or less strongly. It suffices that the impulse vary only by
a thousandth or a two thousandth to make the needle stop over a black
sector or over the following red one. These are differences the muscular
sense cannot distinguish and which elude even the most delicate
instruments. So it is impossible for me to foresee what the needle I have
started will do, and this is why my heart throbs and I hope everything
from luck. The difference in the cause is imperceptible, and the difference
in the effect is for me of the highest importance, since it means my
whole stake.

Permit me, in this connection, a thought somewhat foreign to my

subject. Some years ago a philosopher said that the future is determined
by the past, but not the past by the future; or, in other words, from
knowledge of the present we could deduce the future, but not the past;
 CHANCE 309

because, said he, a cause can have only one effect, while the same effect
might be produced by several different causes. It is clear no scientist can
subscribe to this conclusion. The laws of nature bind the antecedent to
the consequent in such a way that the antecedent is as well determined
by the consequent as the consequent by the antecedent. But whence
came the error of this philosopher? We know that in virtue of Carnot’s
principle physical phenomena are irreversible and the world tends toward
uniformity. When two bodies of different temperature come in contact,
the warmer gives up heat to the colder; so we may foresee that the
temperature will equalize. But once equal, if asked about the anterior
state, what can we answer? We might say that one was warm and the
other cold, but not be able to divine which formerly was the warmer.
And yet in reality the temperatures will never reach perfect equality.
The difference of the temperatures only tends asymptotically toward zero.
There comes a moment when our thermometers are powerless to make it
known. But if we had thermometers a thousand times, a hundred thousand
times as sensitive, we should recognize that there still is a slight difference,
and that one of the bodies remains a little warmer than the other, and so
we could say this it is which formerly was much the warmer.
So then there are, contrary to what we found in the former examples,
great differences in cause and slight differences in effect. Flammarion
once imagined an observer going away from the earth with a velocity
greater than that of light; for him time would have changed sign. History
would be turned about, and Waterloo would precede Austerlitz. Well,
for this observer, effects and causes would be inverted; unstable
equilibrium would no longer be the exception. Because of the universal
irreversibility, all would seem to him to come out of a sort of chaos in
unstable equilibrium. All nature would appear to him delivered over to
chance.

Now for other examples where we shall see somewhat different

characteristics. Take first the kinetic theory of gases. How should we
picture a receptacle filled with gas? Innumerable molecules, moving at
high speeds, flash through this receptacle in every direction. At every
instant they strike against its walls or each other, and these collisions
happen under the most diverse conditions. What above all impresses us
here is not the littleness of the causes, but their complexity, and yet the
former element is still found here and plays an important role. If a
molecule deviated right or left from its trajectory, by a very small
quantity, comparable to the radius of action of the gaseous molecules, it
310 Henri Poincaré

would avoid a collision or sustain it under different conditions, and

that would vary the direction of its velocity after the impact, perhaps by
ninety degrees or by a hundred and eighty degrees.
And this is not all; we have just seen that it is necessary to deflect the
molecule before the clash by only an infinitesimal, to produce its deviation
after the collision by a finite quantity. If then the molecule undergoes
two successive shocks, it will suffice to deflect it before the first by an
infinitesimal of the second order, for it to deviate after the first encounter
by an infinitesimal of the first order, and after the second hit, by a finite
quantity. And the molecule will not undergo merely two shocks; it will
undergo a very great number per second. So that if the first shock has
multiplied the deviation by a very large number A, after n shocks it will
be multiplied by An. It will therefore become very great not merely because
A is large, that is to say because little causes produce big effects, but
because the exponent n is large, that is to say because the shocks are very
numerous and the causes very complex.
Take a second example. Why do the drops of rain in a shower seem to
be distributed at random? This is again because of the complexity of the
causes which determine their formatiom. Ions are distributed in the
atmosphere. For a long while they have been subjected to air currents
constantly changing, they have been caught in very small whirlwinds, so
that their final distribution has no longer any relation to their initial
distribution. Suddenly the temperature falls, vapor condenses, and each of
these ions becomes the center of a drop of rain. To know what will be the
distribution of these drops and how many will fall on each paving stone, it
would not be sufficient to know the initial situation of the ions, it would be
necessary to compute the effect of a thousand little capricious air currents.
And again it is the same if we put grains of powder in suspension in
water. The vase is ploughed by currents whose law we know not, we
only know it is very complicated. At the end of a certain time the grains
will be distributed at random, that is to say uniformly, in the vase; and
this is due precisely to the complexity of these currents. If they obeyed
some simple law, if for example the vase revolved and the currents
circulated around the axis of the vase, describing circles, it would no
longer be the same, since each grain would retain its initial altitude and
its initial distance from the axis.
We should reach the same result in considering the mixing of two
liquids or of two fine-grained powders. And to take a grosser example,
this is also what happens when we shuffle playing cards. At each stroke the
cards undergo a permutation (analogous to that studied in the theory of
 CHANCE 311

substitutions). What will happen? The probability of a particular

permutation (for example, that bringing to the nth place the card
occupying the ␾ [n]th place before the permutation) depends upon the
player’s habits. But if this player shuffles the cards long enough, there
will be a great number of successive permutations, and the resulting
final order will no longer be governed by aught but chance; I mean to
say that all possible orders will be equally probable. It is to the great
number of successive permutations, that is to say to the complexity of
the phenomenon, that this result is due.
A final word about the theory of errors. Here it is that the causes are
complex and multiple. To how many snares is not the observer exposed,
even with the best instrument! He should apply himself to finding out
the largest and avoiding them. These are the ones giving birth to
systematic errors. But when he has eliminated those, admitting that he
succeeds, there remain many small ones which, their effects accumulating,
may become dangerous. Thence come the accidental errors; and we
attribute them to chance because their causes are too complicated and
too numerous. Here again we have only little causes, but each of them
would produce only a slight effect; it is by their union and their number
that their effects become formidable.

We may take still a third point of view, less important than the first
two and upon which I shall lay less stress. When we seek to foresee an
event and examine its antecedents, we strive to search into the anterior
situation. This could not be done for all parts of the universe and we are
content to know what is passing in the neighborhood of the point where
the event should occur, or what would appear to have some relation to
it. An examination cannot be complete and we must know how to choose.
But it may happen that we have passed by circumstances which at first
sight seemed completely foreign to the foreseen happening, to which
one would never have dreamed of attributing any influence and which
nevertheless, contrary to all anticipation, come to play an important role.
A man passes in the street going to his business; some one knowing
the business could have told why he started at such a time and went by
such a street. On the roof works a tiler. The contractor employing him
could in a certain measure foresee what he would do. But the passer-by
scarcely thinks of the tiler, nor the tiler of him; they seem to belong to
two worlds completely foreign to one another. And yet the tiler drops a
tile which kills the man, and we do not hesitate to say this is chance.
Our weakness forbids our considering the entire universe and makes us
312 Henri Poincaré

cut it up into slices. We try to do this as little artificially as possible.

And yet it happens from time to time that two of these slices react upon
each other. The effects of this mutual action then seem to us to be due to
chance.
Is this a third way of conceiving chance? Not always; in fact most
often we are carried back to the first or the second. Whenever two worlds
usually foreign to one another come thus to react upon each other, the
laws of this reaction must be very complex. On the other hand, a very
slight change in the initial conditions of these two worlds would have
been sufficient for the reaction not to have happened. How little was
needed for the man to pass a second later or the tiler to drop his tile a
second sooner.

All we have said still does not explain why chance obeys laws. Does
the fact that the causes are slight or complex suffice for our foreseeing, if
not their effects in each case, at least what their effects will be, on the
average? To answer this question we had better take up again some of the
examples already cited.
I shall begin with that of the roulette. I have said that the point where
the needle will stop depends upon the initial push given it. What is the
probability of this push having this or that value? I know nothing about
it, but it is difficult for me not to suppose that this probability is represented
by a continuous analytic function. The probability that the push is
comprised between α and α + ⑀ will then be sensibly equal to the prob-
ability of its being comprised between α + ⑀ and α + 2⑀, provided ⑀ be very
small. This is a property common to all analytic functions. Minute variations
of the function are proportional to minute variations of the variable.
But we have assumed that an exceedingly slight variation of the push
suffices to change the color of the sector over which the needle finally
stops. From α to α + ⑀ it is red, from α + ⑀ to α + 2⑀ it is black; the
probability of each red sector is therefore the same as of the following
black, and consequently the total probability of red equals the total
probability of black.
The datum of the question is the analytic function representing the
probability of a particular initial push. But the theorem remains true
whatever be this datum, since it depends upon a property common to all
analytic functions. From this it follows finally that we no longer need
the datum.
What we have just said for the case of the roulette applies also to the
example of the minor planets. The zodiac may be regarded as an immense
 CHANCE 313

roulette on which have been tossed many little balls with different initial
impulses varying according to some law. Their present distribution is
uniform and independent of this law, for the same reason as in the
preceding case. Thus we see why phenomena obey the laws of chance
when slight differences in the causes suffice to bring on great differences
in the effects. The probabilities of these slight differences may then be
regarded as proportional to these differences themselves, just because
these differences are minute, and the infinitesimal increments of a
continuous function are proportional to those of the variable.
Take an entirely different example, where intervenes especially the
complexity of the causes. Suppose a player shuffles a pack of cards. At
each shuffle he changes the order of the cards, and he may change them
in many ways. To simplify the exposition, consider only three cards.
The cards which before the shuffle occupied respectively the places 123,
may after the shuffle occupy the places
123, 231, 312, 321, 132, 213.
Each of these six hypotheses is possible and they have respectively for
probabilities:
p 1, p 2, p 3 , p 4, p 5, p 6.
The sum of these six numbers equals 1; but this is all we know of
them; these six probabilities depend naturally upon the habits of the
player which we do not know.
At the second shuffle and the following, this will recommence, and
under the same conditions; I mean that p4 for example represents always
the probability that the three cards which occupied after the nth shuffle
and before n + 1th the places 123, occupy the places 321 after the n + 1th
shuffle. And this remains true whatever be the number n, since the habits
of the player and his way of shuffling remain the same.
But if the number the shuffles is very great, the cards which before
the first shuffle occupied the places 123 may, after the last shuffle, occupy
the places
123, 231, 312, 321, 132, 213
and the probability of these six hypotheses will be sensibly the same and
equal to 1/6; and this will be true whatever be the numbers p1 . . . p6
which we do not know. The great number of shuffles, that is to say the
complexity of the causes, has produced uniformity.
This would apply without change if there were more than three cards,
314 Henri Poincaré

but even with three cards the demonstration would be complicated; let
it suffice to give it for only two cards. Then we have only two possibilities
12, 21 with the probabilities p1 and p2 = 1 – p1.
Suppose n shuffles and suppose I win one franc if the cards are finally
in the initial order and lose one if they are finally inverted. Then, my
mathematical expectation will be (p1 – p2)n.
The difference p1 – p2 is certainly less than 1; so that if n is very great
my expectation will be zero; we need not learn p1 and p2 to be aware that
the game is equitable.
There would always be an exception if one of the numbers p1 and p2
was equal to 1 and the other naught. Then it would not apply because our
initial hypotheses would be too simple.
What we have just seen applies not only to the mixing of cards, but to
all mixings, to those of powders and of liquids, and even to those of the
molecules of gases in the kinetic theory of gases.
To return to this theory, suppose for a moment a gas whose molecules
cannot mutually clash, but may be deviated by hitting the insides of the
vase wherein the gas is confined. If the form of the vase is sufficiently
complex the distribution of the molecules and that of the velocities will
not be long in becoming uniform. But this will not be so if the vase is
spherical or if it has the shape of a cuboid. Why? Because in the first
case the distance from the center to any trajectory will remain constant;
in the second case this will be the absolute value of the angle of each
trajectory with the faces of the cuboid.
So we see what should be understood by conditions too simple; they
are those which conserve something, which leave an invariant remaining.
Are the differential equations of the problem too simple for us to apply
the laws of chance? This question would seem at first view to lack precise
meaning; now we know what it means. They are too simple if they
conserve something, if they admit a uniform integral. If something in
the initial conditions remains unchanged, it is clear the final situation
can no longer be independent of the initial situation.
We come finally to the theory of errors. We know not to what are due
the accidental errors, and precisely because we do not know, we are aware
they obey the law of Gauss. Such is the paradox. The explanation is nearly
the same as in the preceding cases. We need know only one thing: that
the errors are very numerous, that they are very slight, that each may be as
well negative as positive. What is the curve of probability of each of them?
We do not know; we only suppose it is symmetric. We prove then that the
resultant error will follow Gauss’s law, and this resulting law is
 CHANCE 315

independent of the particular laws which we do not know. Here again

the simplicity of the result is born of the very complexity of the data.

But we are not through with paradoxes. I have just recalled the figment
of Flammarion, that of the man going quicker than light, for whom time
changes sign. I said that for him all phenomena would seem due to
chance. That is true from a certain point of view, and yet all these
phenomena at a given moment would not be distributed in conformity
with the laws of chance, since the distribution would be the same as for
us, who, seeing them unfold harmoniously and without coming out of a
primal chaos, do not regard them as ruled by chance.
What does that mean? For Lumen, Flammarion’s man, slight causes
seem to produce great effects; why do not things go on as for us when
we think we see grand effects due to little causes? Would not the same
reasoning be applicable in his case?
Let us return to the argument. When slight differences in the causes
produce vast differences in the effects, why are these effects distributed
according to the laws of chance? Suppose a difference of a millimeter in
the cause produces a difference of a kilometer in the effect. If I win in
case the effect corresponds to a kilometer bearing an even number, my
probability of winning will be 1/2. Why? Because to make that, the
cause must correspond to a millimeter with an even number. Now,
according to all appearance, the probability of the cause varying between
certain limits will be proportional to the distance apart of these limits,
provided this distance be very small. If this hypothesis were not admitted
there would no longer be any way of representing the probability by a
continuous function.
What now will happen when great causes produce small effects? This
is the case where we should not attribute the phenomenon to chance
and where on the contrary Lumen would attribute it to chance. To a
difference of a kilometer in the cause would correspond a difference of a
millimeter in the effect. Would the probability of the cause being comprised
between two limits n kilometers apart still be proportional to n? We have
no reason to suppose so, since this distance, n kilometers, is great. But the
probability that the effect lies between two limits n millimeters apart will
be precisely the same, so it will not be proportional to n, even though this
distance, n millimeters, be small. There is no way therefore of representing
the law of probability of effects by a continuous curve. This curve,
understand, may remain continuous in the analytic sense of the word; to
infinitesimal variations of the abscissa will correspond infinitesimal varia-
316 Henri Poincaré

tions of the ordinate. But practically it will not be continuous, since very
small variations of the ordinate would not correspond to very small
variations of the abscissa. It would become impossible to trace the curve
with an ordinary pencil; that is what I mean.
So what must we conclude? Lumen has no right to say that the
probability of the cause (his cause, our effect) should be represented
necessarily by a continuous function. But then why have we this right?
It is because this state of unstable equilibrium which we have been calling
initial is itself only the final outcome of a long previous history. In the
course of this history complex causes have worked a great while: they
have contributed to produce the mixture of elements and they have
tended to make everything uniform at least within a small region; they
have rounded off the corners, smoothed down the hills and filled up
the valleys. However capricious and irregular may have been the primitive
curve given over to them, they have worked so much toward making it
regular that finally they deliver over to us a continuous curve. And this
is why we may in all confidence assume its continuity.
Lumen would not have the same reasons for such a conclusion. For
him complex causes would not seem agents of equalization and regularity,
but on the contrary would create only inequality and differentiation.
He would see a world more and more varied come forth from a sort of
primitive chaos. The changes he could observe would be for him
unforeseen and impossible to foresee. They would seem to him due to
some caprice or another; but this caprice would be quite different from
our chance, since it would be opposed to all law, while our chance still
has its laws. All these points call for lengthy explications, which perhaps
would aid in the better comprehension of the irreversibility of the
universe.

We have sought to define chance, and now it is proper to put a

question. Has chance thus defined, in so far as this is possible,
objectivity?
It may be questioned. I have spoken of very slight or very complex
causes. But what is very little for one may be very big for another, and
what seems very complex to one may seem simple to another. In part I
have already answered by saying precisely in what cases differential
equations become too simple for the laws of chance to remain applicable.
But it is fitting to examine the matter a little more closely, because we
may take still other points of view.
What means the phrase “very slight”? To understand it we need only go
 CHANCE 317

back to what has already been said. A difference is very slight, an interval
is very small, when within the limits of this interval the probability
remains sensibly constant. And why may this probability be regarded as
constant within a small interval? It is because we assume that the law of
probability is represented by a continuous curve, continuous not only
in the analytic sense, but practically continuous, as already explained.
This means that it not only presents no absolute hiatus, but that it has
neither salients nor re-entrants too acute or too accentuated.
And what gives us the right to make this hypothesis? We have already
said it is because, since the beginning of the ages, there have always
been complex causes ceaselessly acting in the same way and making the
world tend toward uniformity without ever being able to turn back.
These are the causes which little by little have flattened the salients and
filled up the re-entrants, and this is why our probability curves now
show only gentle undulations. In milliards of milliards of ages another
step will have been made toward uniformity, and these undulations will
be ten times as gentle; the radius of mean curvature of our curve will
have become ten times as great. And then such a length as seems to us
today not very small, since on our curve an arc of this length cannot be
regarded as rectilineal, should on the contrary at that epoch be called
very little, since the curvature will have become ten times less and an
arc of this length may be sensibly identified with a sect.
Thus the phrase “very slight” remains relative; but it is not relative to
such or such a man, it is relative to the actual state of the world. It will
change its meaning when the world shall have become more uniform,
when all things shall have blended still more. But then doubtless men
can no longer live and must give place to other beings—should I say far
smaller or far larger? So that our criterion, remaining true for all men,
retains an objective sense.
And on the other hand what means the phrase “very complex”? I
have already given one solution, but there are others. Complex causes
we have said produce a blend more and more intimate, but after how
long a time will this blend satisfy us? When will it have accumulated
sufficient complexity? When shall we have sufficiently shuffled the cards?
If we mix two powders, one blue, the other white, there comes a moment
when the tint of the mixture seems to us uniform because of the
feebleness of our senses; it will be uniform for the presbyope, forced to
gaze from afar, before it will be so for the myope. And when it has become
uniform for all eyes, we still could push back the limit by the use of
instruments. There is no chance for any man ever to discern the infinite
318 Henri Poincaré

variety which, if the kinetic theory is true, hides under the uniform
appearance of a gas. And yet if we accept Gouy’s ideas on the Brownian
movement, does not the microscope seem on the point of showing us
something analogous?
This new criterion is therefore relative like the first; and if it retains
an objective character, it is because all men have approximately the same
senses, the power of their instruments is limited, and besides they use
them only exceptionally.

It is just the same in the moral sciences and particularly in history.

The historian is obliged to make a choice among the events of the epoch
he studies; he recounts only those which seem to him the most important.
He therefore contents himself with relating the most momentous events
of the sixteenth century, for example, as likewise the most remarkable
facts of the seventeenth century. If the first suffice to explain the second,
we say these conform to the laws of history. But if a great event of the
seventeenth century should have for cause a small fact of the sixteenth
century which no history reports, which all the world has neglected,
then we say this event is due to chance. This word has therefore the
same sense as in the physical sciences; it means that slight causes have
produced great effects.
The greatest bit of chance is the birth of a great man. It is only by
chance that meeting of two germinal cells, of different sex, containing
precisely, each on its side, the mysterious elements whose mutual reaction
must produce the genius. One will agree that these elements must be
rare and that their meeting is still more rare. How slight a thing it would
have required to deflect from its route the carrying spermatozoon. It
would have sufficed to deflect it a tenth of a millimeter and Napoleon
would not have been born and the destinies of a continent would have
been changed. No example can better make us understand the veritable
characteristics of chance.
One more word about the paradoxes brought out by the application
of the calculus of probabilities to the moral sciences. It has been proven
that no Chamber of Deputies will ever fail to contain a member of
the opposition, or at least such an event would be so improbable that
we might without fear wager the contrary, and bet a million against a
sou.
Condorcet has striven to calculate how many jurors it would require
to make a judicial error practically impossible. If we had used the results
of this calculation, we should certainly have been exposed to the same
 CHANCE 319

disappointments as in betting, on the faith of the calculus, that the

opposition would never be without a representative.
The laws of chance do not apply to these questions. If justice be not
always meted out to accord with the best reasons, it uses less than we
think the method of Bridoye. This is perhaps to be regretted, for then
the system of Condorcet would shield us from judicial errors.
What is the meaning of this? We are tempted to attribute facts of this
nature to chance because their causes are obscure; but this is not true
chance. The causes are unknown to us, it is true, and they are even
complex; but they are not sufficiently so, since they conserve something.
We have seen that this it is which distinguishes causes “too simple.”
When men are brought together they no longer decide at random and
independently one of another; they influence one another. Multiplex
causes come into action. They worry men, dragging them to right or
left, but one thing there is they cannot destroy, this is their Panurge
flock-of-sheep habits. And this is an invariant.

Difficulties are indeed involved in the application of the calculus of

probabilities to the exact sciences. Why are the decimals of a table of
logarithms, why are those of the number ␲ distributed in accordance
with the laws of chance? Elsewhere I have already studied the question
in so far as it concerns logarithms, and there it is easy. It is clear that a
slight difference of argument will give a slight difference of logarithm,
but a great difference in the sixth decimal of the logarithm. Always we
find again the same criterion.
But as for the number ␲, that presents more difficulties, and I have at
the moment nothing worthwhile to say.
There would be many other questions to resolve, had I wished to
attack them before solving that which I more specially set myself. When
we reach a simple result, when we find for example a round number, we
say that such a result cannot be due to chance, and we seek, for its
explanation, a nonfortuitous cause. And in fact there is only a very
slight probability that among 10,000 numbers chance will give a round
number; for example, the number 10,000. This has only one chance in
10,000. But there is only one chance in 10,000 for the occurrence of any
other one number; and yet this result will not astonish us, nor will it be
hard for us to attribute it to chance; and that simply because it will be
less striking.
Is this a simple illusion of ours, or are there cases where this way of
thinking is legitimate? We must hope so, else were all science impossible.
320 Henri Poincaré

When we wish to check a hypothesis, what do we do? We cannot verify

all its consequences, since they would be infinite in number; we content
ourselves with verifying certain ones and if we succeed we declare the
hypothesis confirmed, because so much success could not be due to
chance. And this is always at bottom the same reasoning.
I cannot completely justify it here, since it would take too much time;
but I may at least say that we find ourselves confronted by two hypotheses,
either a simple cause or that aggregate of complex causes we call chance.
We find it natural to suppose that the first should produce a simple
result, and then, if we find that simple result, the round number for
example, it seems more likely to us to be attributable to the simple cause
which must give it almost certainly, than to chance which could only
give it once in 10,000 times. It will not be the same if we find a result
which is not simple; chance, it is true, will not give this more than once
in 10,000 times; but neither has the simple cause any more chance of
producing it.

The foregoing essays are Chapters III and IV

of Poincaré’s SCIENCE AND METHOD.
 Pierre Simon de Laplace
1749–1827

T he French encyclopedists of the eighteenth century imagined

that they were not far from a final explanation of the universe by
physical and mechanical principles. Laplace is representative of that
confident age which joyfully overestimated the scope of the new
physico-mechanical ideas.
Pierre Simon de Laplace was born at Beaumont-en-Auge in
Normandy in 1749. His father owned a small estate. At the
University of Caen, which he entered at the age of sixteen, he soon
demonstrated his mathematical abilities. He was only eighteen when
he was appointed professor of mathematics at the École Militaire of
Paris.
He rose rapidly. In 1773 he took up one of the outstanding
problems which until then had resisted all attempts at solution in
terms of Newtonian gravitation: the problem of why Jupiter’s orbit
appeared to be continually shrinking while Saturn’s was continually
expanding. Newton had feared that the planetary system would need
divine intervention from time to time if it was to be preserved in
anything like its present order. Laplace was able to show that this
phenomenon was of periodic nature and could be expected to right
itself every 929 years.
Laplace’s monumental work on astronomical gravitation, Celestial
Mechanics, was published in five volumes between 1799 and 1825. It
is a work of formidable abstraction, obscure in style, with great
gaps in the arguments bridged by the phrase “it is easy to see.” Nor
is it entirely honest writing. He deliberately omitted references to
the work of others, presenting the labors of three generations of
mathematicians as the fruit of his brain. Nevertheless, it is a
triumphant work.
321
322 Laplace

L aplace’s contribution in the field of probability is unequaled by

any other single investigator. The Analytical Theory of Probabilities (1812)
described a calculus for assigning a “degree of rational belief” to
propositions about chance events. “Belief” seems a startlingly
unscientific notion in this context. We order our daily affairs in the
firm belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, but it does not seem to
be an idea to which a definite quantity could be assigned. But, belief
can be measured, said Laplace, and he set up the calculus for doing
so.
Although the concept of probability has become one of the
fundamental notions of modern science, the experts are still not
able to agree on its meaning. The classic definition, formulated by
Laplace, has, to a large extent, been replaced by the “relative
frequency” interpretation developed by Charles S. Peirce, as
expounded in his essay The Red and the Black.
A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities is a nontechnical introduction to
the laws of chance. In establishing the ten principles which form the
calculus, Laplace deals with “hope” as easily as he does with tossed
coins; the principles of probability affect every phase of human life.
Everything can be measured. Laplace saw no technical bar to an
intelligence which would be able to predict the course of the universe
in minutest detail with infallible accuracy. His was not an age of
intellectual humility.
Modern science is more modest. In some ways the universe is
more mysterious than it has ever been. Nature is no longer examined
solely in terms of motion and matter. Laplace’s celestial machine
established the stability of the universe for a very long time indeed,
but not for the “eternal duration” that he claimed.1 The eighteenth
1
For various theories about the ultimate fate of the universe, see selections from
Arthur Eddington, pp. 565–580, and Sir James Jeans, pp. 585–596, in Vol. 8 in this set.

Notes from the artist: “. . . an almost surrealist head study of Laplace,

made up in part from the ancient symbols of the planets. The background
is a facsimile of the constellations in the Northern Hemisphere
as drawn by Albrecht Dürer in 1515.”
324 Laplace

century was unique in the history of ideas. Never before nor since
has man been so sure of his ability to comprehend all of nature.
Laplace died in 1827. He surrounded himself with astronomers,
physicists, naturalists, and mathematicians during his last years. Busy
and happy, he received distinguished visitors from all parts of the
world. His scientific genius earned for him the title of “the Newton
of France.”
Laplace has been criticized for his infinite adaptability to changing
political environments; his contemporaries cynically referred to his
“suppleness.” During the turbulent times of the French Revolution
he kept his head—literally—and prospered. As his books entered
into successive editions, the introductions were changed to fit the
times. Laplace dedicated the 1812 edition of The Analytical Theory of
Probabilities to “Napoleon the Great”; in the 1814 edition he
suppressed this dedication and wrote “that the fall of empires which
aspired to universal domination could be predicted with a very high
probability by one versed in the calculus of chance.”
 Probability
from A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities

INTRODUCTION

his philosophical essay is the development of a lecture on

probabilities which I delivered in 1795 to the normal schools whither I
had been called, by a decree of the national convention, as professor of
mathematics with Lagrange. I have recently published upon the same
subject a work entitled The Analytical Theory of Probabilities. I present here
without the aid of analysis the principles and general results of this
theory, applying them to the most important questions of life, which are
indeed for the most part only problems of probability. Strictly speaking
it may even be said that nearly all our knowledge is problematical; and
in the small number of things which we are able to know with certainty,
even in the mathematical sciences themselves, the principal means for
ascertaining truth—induction and analogy—are based on probabilities; so
that the entire system of human knowledge is connected with the theory
set forth in this essay. Doubtless it will be seen here with interest that in
considering, even in the eternal principles of reason, justice, and humanity,
only the favorable chances which are constantly attached to them, there is
a great advantage in following these principles and serious inconvenience
in departing from them: their chances, like those favorable to lotteries,
always end by prevailing in the midst of the vacillations of hazard. I hope
that the reflections given in this essay may merit the attention of
philosophers and direct it to a subject so worthy of engaging their minds.

CONCERNING PROBABILITY

All events, even those which on account of their insignificance do not

seem to follow the great laws of nature, are a result of it just as necessarily

325
326 Laplace

as the revolutions of the sun. In ignorance of the ties which unite such
events to the entire system of the universe, they have been made to
depend upon final causes or upon hazard, according as they occur and
are repeated with regularity, or appear without regard to order; but these
imaginary causes have gradually receded with the widening bounds of
knowledge and disappear entirely before sound philosophy, which sees
in them only the expression of our ignorance of the true causes.
Present events are connected with preceding ones by a tie based upon
the evident principle that a thing cannot occur without a cause which
produces it. This axiom, known by the name of the principle of sufficient
reason, extends even to actions which are considered indifferent; the freest
will is unable without a determinative motive to give them birth; if we
assume two positions with exactly similar circumstances and find that the
will is active in the one and inactive in the other, we say that its choice is
an effect without a cause. It is then, says Leibnitz, the blind chance of the
Epicureans. The contrary opinion is an illusion of the mind, which, losing
sight of the evasive reasons of the choice of the will in indifferent things,
believes that choice is determined of itself and without motives.
We ought then to regard the present state of the universe as the effect
of its anterior state and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given
for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces
by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings
who compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to
analysis—it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the
greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it,
nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present
to its eyes. The human mind offers, in the perfection which it has been
able to give to astronomy, a feeble idea of this intelligence. Its discoveries
in mechanics and geometry, added to that of universal gravity, have
enabled it to comprehend in the same analytical expressions the past
and future states of the system of the world. Applying the same method
to some other objects of its knowledge, it has succeeded in referring to
general laws observed phenomena and in foreseeing those which given
circumstances ought to produce. All these efforts in the search for truth
tend to lead it back continually to the vast intelligence which we have
just mentioned, but from which it will always remain infinitely removed.
This tendency, peculiar to the human race, is that which renders it
superior to animals; and their progress in this respect distinguishes
nations and ages and constitutes their true glory.
Let us recall that formerly, and at no remote epoch, an unusual rain or
 P RO BAB I LITY 327

an extreme drought, a comet having in train a very long tail, the eclipses,
the aurora borealis, and in general all the unusual phenomena were
regarded as so many signs of celestial wrath. Heaven was invoked in
order to avert their baneful influence. No one prayed to have the planets
and the sun arrested in their courses: observation had soon made apparent
the futility of such prayers. But as these phenomena, occurring and
disappearing at long intervals, seemed to oppose the order of nature, it
was supposed that Heaven, irritated by the crimes of the earth, had created
them to announce its vengeance. Thus the long tail of the comet of 1456
spread terror through Europe, already thrown into consternation by the
rapid successes of the Turks, who had just overthrown the Lower Empire.
This star after four revolutions has excited among us a very different
interest. The knowledge of the laws of the system of the world acquired
in the interval had dissipated the fears begotten by the ignorance of the
true relationship of man to the universe; and Halley, having recognized
the identity of this comet with those of the years 1531, 1607, and 1682,
announced its next return for the end of the year 1758 or the beginning
of the year 1759. The learned world awaited with impatience this return
which was to confirm one of the greatest discoveries that have been
made in the sciences, and fulfill the prediction of Seneca when he said,
in speaking of the revolutions of those stars which fall from an enormous
height: “The day will come when, by study pursued through several
ages, the things now concealed will appear with evidence; and posterity
will be astonished that truths so clear had escaped us.” Clairaut then
undertook to submit to analysis the perturbations which the comet had
experienced by the action of the two great planets, Jupiter and Saturn;
after immense calculations he fixed its next passage at the perihelion
toward the beginning of April, 1759, which was actually verified by
observation. The regularity which astronomy shows us in the movements
of the comets doubtless exists also in all phenomena.
The curve described by a simple molecule of air or vapor is regulated
in a manner just as certain as the planetary orbits; the only difference
between them is that which comes from our ignorance.
Probability is relative, in part to this ignorance, in part to our
knowledge. We know that of three or a greater number of events a single
one ought to occur; but nothing induces us to believe that one of them
will occur rather than the others. In this state of indecision it is impossible
for us to announce their occurrence with certainty. It is, however, probable
that one of these events, chosen at will, will not occur because we see
several cases equally possible which exclude its occurrence, while only
a single one favors it.
328 Laplace

The theory of chance consists in reducing all the events of the same
kind to a certain number of cases equally possible, that is to say, to such
as we may be equally undecided about in regard to their existence, and
in determining the number of cases favorable to the event whose
probability is sought. The ratio of this number to that of all the cases
possible is the measure of this probability, which is thus simply a fraction
whose numerator is the number of favorable cases and whose denominator
is the number of all the cases possible.
The preceding notion of probability supposes that, in increasing in the
same ratio the number of favorable cases and that of all the cases possible,
the probability remains the same. In order to convince ourselves let us
take two urns, A and B, the first containing four white and two black
balls, and the second containing only two white balls and one black one.
We may imagine the two black balls of the first urn attached by a thread
which breaks at the moment when one of them is seized in order to be
drawn out, and the four white balls thus forming two similar systems. All
the chances which will favor the seizure of one of the balls of the black
system will lead to a black ball. If we conceive now that the threads which
unite the balls do not break at all, it is clear that the number of possible
chances will not change any more than that of the chances favorable to
the extraction of the black balls; but two balls will be drawn from the urn
at the same time; the probability of drawing a black ball from the urn A
will then be the same as at first. But then we have obviously the case of
urn B with the single difference that the three balls of this last urn would
be replaced by three systems of two balls invariably connected.
When all the cases are favorable to an event the probability changes
to certainty and its expression becomes equal to unity. Upon this
condition, certainty and probability are comparable, although there may
be an essential difference between the two states of the mind when a
truth is rigorously demonstrated to it, or when it still perceives a small
source of error.
In things which are only probable the difference of the data, which
each man has in regard to them, is one of the principal causes of the
diversity of opinions which prevail in regard to the same objects. Let us
suppose, for example, that we have three urns, A, B, C, one of which
contains only black balls while the two others contain only white balls; a
ball is to be drawn from the urn C and the probability is demanded that
this ball will be black. If we do not know which of the three urns contains
black balls only, so that there is no reason to believe that it is C rather than
B or A, these three hypotheses will appear equally possible, and since a
 P RO BAB I LITY 329

black ball can be drawn only in the first hypothesis, the probability of
drawing it is equal to one third. If it is known that the urn A contains
white balls only, the indecision then extends only to the urns B and C,
and the probability that the ball drawn from the urn C will be black is
one half. Finally this probability changes to certainty if we are assured
that the urns A and B contain white balls only.
It is thus that an incident related to a numerous assembly finds various
degrees of credence, according to the extent of knowledge of the auditors.
If the man who reports it is fully convinced of it and if, by his position
and character, he inspires great confidence, his statement, however
extraordinary it may be, will have for the auditors who lack information
the same degree of probability as an ordinary statement made by the
same man, and they will have entire faith in it. But if some one of them
knows that the same incident is rejected by other equally trustworthy
men, he will be in doubt and the incident will be discredited by the
enlightened auditors, who will reject it whether it be in regard to facts
well averred or the immutable laws of nature.
It is to the influence of the opinion of those whom the multitude judges
best informed and to whom it has been accustomed to give its confidence
in regard to the most important matters of life that the propagation of
those errors is due which in times of ignorance have covered the face of
the earth. Magic and astrology offer us two great examples. These errors
inculcated in infancy, adopted without examination, and having for a
basis only universal credence, have maintained themselves during a very
long time; but at last the progress of science has destroyed them in the
minds of enlightened men, whose opinion consequently has caused them
to disappear even among the common people, through the power of
imitation and habit which had so generally spread them abroad. This
power, the richest resource of the moral world, establishes and conserves
in a whole nation ideas entirely contrary to those which it upholds
elsewhere with the same authority. What indulgence ought we not then
to have for opinions different from ours, when this difference often depends
only upon the various points of view where circumstances have placed us!
Let us enlighten those whom we judge insufficiently instructed; but first
let us examine critically our own opinions and weigh with impartiality
their respective probabilities.
The difference of opinions depends, however, upon the manner in
which the influence of known data is determined. The theory of
probabilities holds to considerations so delicate that it is not surprising
that with the same data two persons arrive at different results, es-
330 Laplace

pecially in very complicated questions. Let us examine now the general

principles of this theory.

TH E G ENERAL PRINCIPLES
OF TH E CALCULUS OF PROBABILITIES

First Principle. The first of these principles is the definition itself of

probability, which, as has been seen, is the ratio of the number of
favorable cases to that of all the cases possible.
Second Principle. But that supposes the various cases equally possible. If
they are not so, we will determine first their respective possibilities,
whose exact appreciation is one of the most delicate points of the theory
of chance. Then the probability will be the sum of the possibilities of
each favorable case. Let us illustrate this principle by an example.
Let us suppose that we throw into the air a large and very thin coin
whose two large opposite faces, which we will call heads and tails, are
perfectly similar. Let us find the probability of throwing heads at least
one time in two throws. It is clear that four equally possible cases may
arise, namely, heads at the first and at the second throw; heads at the
first throw and tails at the second; tails at the first throw and heads at
the second; finally, tails at both throws. The first three cases are favorable
to the event whose probability is sought; consequently this probability
is equal to 3/4; so that it is a bet of three to one that heads will be thrown
at least once in two throws.
We can count at this game only three different cases, namely, heads at
the first throw, which dispenses with throwing a second time; tails at the
first throw and heads at the second; finally, tails at the first and at
the second throw. This would reduce the probability to 2/3 if we should
consider with d’Alembert these three cases as equally possible. But it is
apparent that the probability of throwing heads at the first throw is 1/2,
while that of the two other cases is 1/4, the first case being a simple
event which corresponds to two events combined: heads at the first and
at the second throw, and heads at the first throw, tails at the second. If
we then, conforming to the second principle, add the possibility 1/2 of
heads at the first throw to the possibility 1/4 of tails at the first throw
and heads at the second, we shall have 3/4 for the probability sought,
which agrees with what is found in the supposition when we play the
two throws. This supposition does not change at all the chance of that
one who bets on this event; it simply serves to reduce the various cases
to the cases equally possible.
 P RO BAB I LITY 331

Third Principle. One of the most important points of the theory of

probabilities and that which lends the most to illusions is the manner in
which these probabilities increase or diminish by their mutual combination.
If the events are independent of one another, the probability of their
combined existence is the product of their respective probabilities. Thus
the probability of throwing one ace with a single die is 1/6; that of throwing
two aces in throwing two dice at the same time is 1/36. Each face of the
one being able to combine with the six faces of the other, there are in fact
thirty-six equally possible cases, among which one single case gives two
aces. Generally the probability that a simple event in the same circumstances
will occur consecutively a given number of times is equal to the probability
of this simple event raised to the power indicated by this number. Having
thus the successive powers of a fraction less than unity diminishing without
ceasing, an event which depends upon a series of very great probabilities
may become extremely improbable. Suppose then an incident be transmitted
to us by twenty witnesses in such manner that the first has transmitted it
to the second, the second to the third, and so on. Suppose again that the
probability of each testimony be equal to the fraction 9/10; that of the
incident resulting from the testimonies will be less than 1/8. We cannot
better compare this diminution of the probability than with the extinction
of the light of objects by the interposition of several pieces of glass. A
relatively small number of pieces suffices to take away the view of an
object that a single piece allows us to perceive in a distinct manner. The
historians do not appear to have paid sufficient attention to this degradation
of the probability of events when seen across a great number of successive
generations; many historical events reputed as certain would be at least
doubtful if they were submitted to this test.
In the purely mathematical sciences the most distant consequences
participate in the certainty of the principle from which they are derived.
In the applications of analysis to physics the results have all the certainty
of facts or experiences. But in the moral sciences, where each inference
is deduced from that which precedes it only in a probable manner,
however probable these deductions may be, the chance of error increases
with their number and ultimately surpasses the chance of truth in the
consequences very remote from the principle.
Fourth Principle. When two events depend upon each other, the
probability of the compound event is the product of the probability of
the first event and the probability that, this event having occurred, the
second will occur. Thus in the preceding case of the three urns A, B, C, of
which two contain only white balls and one contains only black balls, the
332 Laplace

probability of drawing a white ball from the urn C is 2/3, since of the
three urns only two contain balls of that color. But when a white ball
has been drawn from the urn C, the indecision relative to that one of
the urns which contain only black balls extends only to the urns A and
B; the probability of drawing a white ball from the urn B is 1/2; the
product of 2/3 by 1/2, or 1/3, is then the probability of drawing two
white balls at one time from the urns B and C.
We see by this example the influence of past events upon the probability
of future events. For the probability of drawing a white ball from the
urn B, which primarily is 2/3, becomes 1/2 when a white ball has been
drawn from the urn C; it would change to certainty if a black ball had
been drawn from the same urn. We will determine this influence by
means of the following principle, which is a corollary of the preceding
one.
Fifth Principle. If we calculate a priori the probability of the occurred
event and the probability of an event composed of that one and a second
one which is expected, the second probability divided by the first will
be the probability of the event expected, drawn from the observed event.
Here is presented the question raised by some philosophers touching
the influence of the past upon the probability of the future. Let us suppose
at the play of heads and tails that heads has occurred oftener than tails.
By this alone we shall be led to believe that in the constitution of the
coin there is a secret cause which favors it. Thus in the conduct of life
constant happiness is a proof of competency which should induce us to
employ preferably happy persons. But if by the unreliability of
circumstances we are constantly brought back to a state of absolute
indecision, if, for example, we change the coin at each throw at the play
of heads and tails, the past can shed no light upon the future and it
would be absurd to take account of it.
Sixth Principle. Each of the causes to which an observed event may be
attributed is indicated with just as much likelihood as there is probability
that the event will take place, supposing the event to be constant. The
probability of the existence of any one of these causes is then a fraction
whose numerator is the probability of the event resulting from this cause
and whose denominator is the sum of the similar probabilities relative to
all the causes; if these various causes, considered a priori, are unequally
probable, it is necessary, in place of the probability of the event resulting
from each cause, to employ the product of this probability by the possibility
of the cause itself. This is the fundamental principle of this branch of
the analysis of chances which consists in passing from events to causes.
 P RO BAB I LITY 333

This principle gives the reason why we attribute regular events to a

particular cause. Some philosophers have thought that these events are
less possible than others and that at the play of heads and tails, for example,
the combination in which heads occurs twenty successive times is less
easy in its nature than those where heads and tails are mixed in an irregular
manner. But this opinion supposes that past events have an influence on
the possibility of future events, which is not at all admissible. The regular
combinations occur more rarely only because they are less numerous. If
we seek a cause wherever we perceive symmetry, it is not that we regard a
symmetrical event as less possible than the others, but, since this event
ought to be the effect of a regular cause or that of chance, the first of these
suppositions is more probable than the second. On a table we see letters
arranged in this order, Constantinople, and we judge that this arrangement
is not the result of chance, not because it is less possible than the others,
for if this word were not employed in any language we should not suspect
it came from any particular cause, but this word being in use among us, it
is incomparably more probable that some person has thus arranged the
aforesaid letters than that this arrangement is due to chance.
This is the place to define the word extraordinary. We arrange in our
thought all possible events in various classes; and we regard as
extraordinary those classes which include a very small number. Thus at
the play of heads and tails the occurrence of heads a hundred successive
times appears to us extraordinary because of the almost infinite number
of combinations which may occur in a hundred throws; and if we divide
the combinations into regular series containing an order easy to
comprehend, and into irregular series, the latter are incomparably more
numerous. The drawing of a white ball from an urn which among a
million balls contains only one of this color, the others being black,
would appear to us likewise extraordinary, because we form only two
classes of events relative to the two colors. But the drawing of the number
475813, for example, from an urn that contains a million numbers seems
to us an ordinary event; because, comparing individually the numbers
with one another without dividing them into classes, we have no reason
to believe that one of them will appear sooner than the others.
From what precedes, we ought generally to conclude that the more
extraordinary the event, the greater the need of its being supported by
strong proofs. For those who attest it, being able to deceive or to have
been deceived, these two causes are as much more probable as the reality
of the event is less. We shall see this particularly when we come to speak
of the probability of testimony.
334 Laplace

Seventh Principle. The probability of a future event is the sum of the

products of the probability of each cause, drawn from the event observed,
by the probability that, this cause existing, the future event will occur.
The following example will illustrate this principle.
Let us imagine an urn which contains only two balls, each of which
may be either white or black. One of these balls is drawn and is put back
into the urn before proceeding to a new draw. Suppose that in the first
two draws white balls have been drawn; the probability of again drawing
a white ball at the third draw is required.
Only two hypotheses can be made here: either one of the balls is
white and the other black, or both are white. In the first hypothesis the
probability of the event observed is 1/4; it is unity or certainty in the
second. Thus in regarding these hypotheses as so many causes, we shall
have for the sixth principle 1/5 and 4/5 for their respective probabilities.
But if the first hypothesis occurs, the probability of drawing a white ball
at the third draw is 1/2; it is equal to certainty in the second hypothesis;
multiplying then the last probabilities by those of the corresponding
hypotheses, the sum of the products, or 9/10, will be the probability of
drawing a white ball at the third draw.
When the probability of a single event is unknown we may suppose it
equal to any value from zero to unity. The probability of each of these
hypotheses, drawn from the event observed, is, by the sixth principle, a
fraction whose numerator is the probability of the event in this hypothesis
and whose denominator is the sum of the similar probabilities relative to
all the hypotheses. Thus the probability that the possibility of the event
is comprised within given limits is the sum of the fractions comprised
within these limits. Now if we multiply each fraction by the probability
of the future event, determined in the corresponding hypothesis, the
sum of the products relative to all the hypotheses will be, by the seventh
principle, the probability of the future event drawn from the event
observed. Thus we find that an event having occurred successively any
number of times, the probability that it will happen again the next time
is equal to this number increased by unity divided by the same number,
increased by two units. Placing the most ancient epoch of history at five
thousand years ago, or at 1826213 days, and the sun having risen
constantly in the interval at each revolution of twenty-four hours, it is a
bet of 1826214 to one that it will rise again tomorrow. But this number
is incomparably greater for him who, recognizing in the totality of
phenomena the principal regulator of days and seasons, sees that nothing
at the present moment can arrest the course of it.
 P RO BAB I LITY 335

Buffon in his Political Arithmetic calculates differently the preceding

probability. He supposes that it differs from unity only by a fraction
whose numerator is unity and whose denominator is the number 2 raised
to a power equal to the number of days which have elapsed since the
epoch. But the true manner of relating past events with the probability
of causes and of future events was unknown to this illustrious writer.

CONCERNING HOPE

The probability of events serves to determine the hope or the fear of

persons interested in their existence. The word hope has various
acceptations; it expresses generally the advantage of that one who expects
a certain benefit in suppositions which are only probable. This advantage
in the theory of chance is a product of the sum hoped for by the probability
of obtaining it; it is the partial sum which ought to result when we do
not wish to run the risks of the event in supposing that the division is
made proportional to the probabilities. This division is the only equitable
one when all strange circumstances are eliminated; because an equal
degree of probability gives an equal right to the sum hoped for. We will
call this advantage mathematical hope.
Eighth Principle. When the advantage depends on several events it is
obtained by taking the sum of the products of the probability of each
event by the benefit attached to its occurrence.
Let us apply this principle to some examples. Let us suppose that at
the play of heads and tails Paul receives two francs if he throws heads at
the first throw and five francs if he throws it only at the second.
Multiplying two francs by the probability 1/2 of the first case, and five
francs by the probability 1/4 of the second case, the sum of the products,
or two and a quarter francs, will be Paul’s advantage. It is the sum
which he ought to give in advance to that one who has given him this
advantage; for, in order to maintain the equality of the play, the throw
ought to be equal to the advantage which it procures.
If Paul receives two francs by throwing heads at the first and five
francs by throwing it at the second throw, whether he has thrown it or
not at the first, the probability of throwing heads at the second throw
being 1/2, multiplying two francs and five francs by 1/2 the sum of these
products will give three and one half francs for Paul’s advantage and
consequently for his stake at the game.
Ninth Principle. In a series of probable events of which the ones produce
a benefit and the others a loss, we shall have the advantage which
336 Laplace

results from it by making a sum of the products of the probability of each

favorable event by the benefit which it procures, and subtracting from
this sum that of the products of the probability of each unfavorable event
by the loss which is attached to it. If the second sum is greater than the
first, the benefit becomes a loss and hope is changed to fear.
Consequently we ought always in the conduct of life to make the
product of the benefit hoped for, by its probability, at least equal to the
similar product relative to the loss. But it is necessary, in order to attain
this, to appreciate exactly the advantages, the losses, and their respective
probabilities. For this a great accuracy of mind, a delicate judgment,
and a great experience in affairs is necessary; it is necessary to know
how to guard one’s self against prejudices, illusions of fear or hope, and
erroneous ideas, ideas of fortune and happiness, with which the majority
of people feed their self-love.
The application of the preceding principles to the following question
has greatly exercised the geometricians. Paul plays at heads and tails
with the condition of receiving two francs if he throws heads at the
first throw, four francs if he throws it only at the second throw, eight
francs if he throws it only at the third, and so on. His stake at the play
ought to be, according to the eighth principle, equal to the number of
throws, so that if the game continues to infinity the stake ought to be
infinite. However, no reasonable man would wish to risk at this game
even a small sum, for example five francs. Whence comes this difference
between the result of calculation and the indication of common sense?
We soon recognize that it amounts to this: that the moral advantage
which a benefit procures for us is not proportional to this benefit and
that it depends upon a thousand circumstances, often very difficult to
define, but of which the most general and most important is that of
fortune.
Indeed it is apparent that one franc has much greater value for him
who possesses only a hundred than for a millionaire. We ought then to
distinguish in the hoped-for benefit its absolute from its relative value.
But the latter is regulated by the motives which make it desirable, whereas
the first is independent of them. The general principle for appreciating
this relative value cannot be given, but here is one proposed by Daniel
Bernoulli which will serve in many cases.
Tenth Principle. The relative value of an infinitely small sum is equal to
its absolute value divided by the total benefit of the person interested.
This supposes that every one has a certain benefit whose value can never
be estimated as zero. Indeed even that one who possesses nothing always
 P RO BAB I LITY 337

gives to the product of his labor and to his hopes a value at least equal to
that which is absolutely necessary to sustain him.
If we apply analysis to the principle just propounded, we obtain the
following rule: Let us designate by unity the part of the fortune of an
individual, independent of his expectations. If we determine the different
values that this fortune may have by virtue of these expectations and
their probabilities, the product of these values raised respectively to the
powers indicated by their probabilities will be the physical fortune which
would procure for the individual the same moral advantage which he
receives from the part of his fortune taken as unity and from his
expectations; by subtracting unity from the product, the difference will
be the increase of the physical fortune due to expectations: we will call
this increase moral hope. It is easy to see that it coincides with mathematical
hope when the fortune taken as unity becomes infinite in reference to
the variations which it receives from the expectations. But when these
variations are an appreciable part of this unity the two hopes may differ
very materially among themselves.
This rule conduces to results conformable to the indications of
common sense which can by this means be appreciated with some
exactitude. Thus in the preceding question it is found that if the fortune
of Paul is two hundred francs, he ought not reasonably to stake more
than nine francs. The same rule leads us again to distribute the danger
over several parts of a benefit expected rather than to expose the entire
benefit to this danger. It results similarly that at the fairest game the
loss is always greater than the gain. Let us suppose, for example, that a
player having a fortune of one hundred francs risks fifty at the play of
heads and tails; his fortune after his stake at the play will be reduced to
eighty-seven francs, that is to say, this last sum would procure for the
player the same moral advantage as the state of his fortune after
the stake. The play is then disadvantageous even in the case where the
stake is equal to the product of the sum hoped for, by its probability.
We can judge by this of the immorality of games in which the sum
hoped for is below this product. They subsist only by false reasonings
and by the cupidity which they excite and which, leading the people
to sacrifice their necessaries to chimerical hopes whose improbability
they are not in condition to appreciate, are the source of an infinity of
evils.
The disadvantage of games of chance, the advantage of not exposing
to the same danger the whole benefit that is expected, and all the similar
results indicated by common sense, subsist, whatever may be the function
338 Laplace

of the physical fortune which for each individual expresses his moral
fortune. It is enough that the proportion of the increase of this function
to the increase of the physical fortune diminishes in the measure that
the latter increases.

The foregoing consists of Chapters I–IV

of Laplace’s A PH ILOSOPHICAL E SSAY ON PROBAB ILITI E S,
translated by Frederick W. Truscott and Frederick L. Emory.
 Charles Sanders Peirce
1839–1914

C harles Sanders Peirce was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts,

in 1839. He was the son of Benjamin Peirce, a Harvard professor
and a leading mathematician. Peirce’s early education, supervised
by his father, was a strenuous experience. The elder Peirce was a
forceful man and relentless in his determination to develop his son’s
mathematical talents. He sometimes kept the boy awake all night,
training him in the “art of concentration” by playing rapid games of
double rummy. When Charles began to read philosophers, his father
would have him repeat their proofs and in a very few words would
usually rip them apart and show them empty. This forced march to
education gave young Peirce a wide background in experimental
science, mathematics, logic, and philosophy, but it also may have
contributed to his later unhappiness and chaotic personal life.
In Peirce’s own words: “I insensibly put on a sort of swagger
here, which is designed to say, ‘You are a very good fellow in your
way; who you are I don’t know and I don’t care, but I, you know,
am Mr. Peirce, distinguished for my various scientific acquirements,
but above all for the extreme modesty in which respect I challenge
the world.’” This is a humorous self-portrait, but apt. Peirce really
was a difficult man. He was unable to get along with others, careless
about his appearance, impractical in money matters, forgetful, vain,
and arrogant. He died in 1914 in poverty, unknown to the general
public. Yet today he is recognized as one of the most influential
thinkers this country has produced.
In 1861 Peirce joined the United States Coast Survey, in which
post he remained for thirty years. He served as computer for the
nautical almanac, made pendulum investigations, was in charge of

339
340 C. S. Peirce

gravity research and wrote a number of scientific papers. This

government post left him enough time to teach and to engage in
private research in science, philosophy, and logic. His contributions
to the science of logic are undisputed. Though not extensive, his
writings in pure mathematics were original and prophetic. He
published only one book in his lifetime, Photometric Researches (1878),
but most of his scattered writings have been published posthumously
in six volumes, Collected Papers (1931–35).

P eirce was the founder of pragmatism, the philosophy that was

elaborated by William James 1 and John Dewey.2 Dewey and James
diverged from the original doctrine, but all three represent an interest
in relating the abstract to the concrete.
Peirce was deeply concerned with the theory of meaning. The
main purpose of his investigations was to explain the pragmatic
meaning of general terms as they are used by scientists. The
following excerpts from an essay entitled How To Make Our Ideas
Clear are representative of his doctrine:

Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects. . . . What a thing
means is simply what habit it involves. . . . There is no distinction of
meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of
practice. . . . The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition. . . .

It has been said that pragmatism is a characteristically American

movement in philosophy. Its emphasis is on “doing.”
Peirce was one of the first proponents of the frequency
interpretation of probability. It is in keeping with his whole
philosophy that this interpretation agrees with our everyday
“common sense” concept. It is also the interpretation most widely
used in applied statistics and measurement, and in many branches
of the theoretical sciences.
The Red and the Black, the selection which follows, is one of the
most charming essays on probability ever written. The mathematician-
philosopher arrives, by logic, at the conclusion that he is indeed his
brother’s keeper. While this is an unusual argument for an ethical
principle, it is not the first time that the laws of probability have been
1
See Vol. 10, pp. 39–87, in this set.
2
See Vol. 10, pp. 92–213, in this set.
 C. S. Peirce 341

invoked to support what is essentially an article of religious belief.

Pascal, too, once urged mankind to consider the following odds.
“Let us weigh the gain and loss in wagering that God is,” he wrote.
“Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you
lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He is.” 3
3
Compare Great Books of the Western World.
 The Red and the Black

he theory of probabilities is simply the science of logic

quantitatively treated. There are two conceivable certainties with reference
to any hypothesis, the certainty of its truth and the certainty of its falsity.
The numbers one and zero are appropriated, in this calculus, to marking
these extremes of knowledge; while fractions having values intermediate
between them indicate, as we may vaguely say, the degrees in which the
evidence leans toward one or the other. The general problem of
probabilities is, from a given state of facts, to determine the numerical
probability of a possible fact. This is the same as to inquire how much
the given facts are worth, considered as evidence to prove the possible
fact. Thus the problem of probabilities is simply the general problem of
logic.
Probability is a continuous quantity, so that great advantages may be
expected from this mode of studying logic. Some writers have gone so
far as to maintain that, by means of the calculus of chances, every solid
inference may be represented by legitimate arithmetical operations upon
the numbers given in the premises. If this be, indeed, true, the great
problem of logic, how it is that the observation of one fact can give us
knowledge of another independent fact, is reduced to a mere question
of arithmetic. It seems proper to examine this pretension before
undertaking any more recondite solution of the paradox.
But, unfortunately, writers on probabilities are not agreed in regard to
this result. This branch of mathematics is the only one, I believe, in which
good writers frequently get results entirely erroneous. In elementary
geometry the reasoning is frequently fallacious, but erroneous conclusions
are avoided; but it may be doubted if there is a single extensive treatise on
probabilities in existence which does not contain solutions absolutely
indefensible. This is partly owing to the want of any regular method of
procedure; for the subject involves too many subtleties to make it easy to

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 TH E RE D AN D TH E B LACK 343

put its problems into equations without such an aid. But, beyond this, the
fundamental principles of its calculus are more or less in dispute. In regard
to that class of questions to which it is chiefly applied for practical purposes,
there is comparatively little doubt; but in regard to others to which it has
been sought to extend it, opinion is somewhat unsettled.
This last class of difficulties can only be entirely overcome by making
the idea of probability perfectly clear in our minds in the way set forth
in our last paper.1

To get a clear idea of what we mean by probability, we have to consider

what real and sensible difference there is between one degree of
probability and another.
The character of probability belongs primarily, without doubt, to
certain inferences. Locke explains it as follows: After remarking that the
mathematician positively knows that the sum of the three angles of a
triangle is equal to two right angles because he apprehends the geometrical
proof, he thus continues: “But another man who never took the pains to
observe the demonstration, hearing a mathematician, a man of credit,
affirm the three angles of a triangle to be equal to two right ones, assents
to it; i.e., receives it for true. In which case the foundation of his assent
is the probability of the thing, the proof being such as, for the most part,
carries truth with it; the man on whose testimony he receives it not
being wont to affirm anything contrary to, or besides his knowledge,
especially in matters of this kind.” The celebrated Essay concerning Human
Understanding contains many passages which, like this one, make the first
steps in profound analyses which are not further developed. It was shown
in the first of these papers that the validity of an inference does not
depend on any tendency of the mind to accept it, however strong such
tendency may be; but consists in the real fact that, when premises like
those of the argument in question are true, conclusions related to them
like that of this argument are also true. It was remarked that in a logical
mind an argument is always conceived as a member of a genus of arguments
all constructed in the same way, and such that, when their premises are
real facts, their conclusions are so also. If the argument is demonstrative,
then this is always so; if it is only probable, then it is for the most part
so. As Locke says, the probable argument is “such as for the most part
carries truth with it.”

1. [Peirce is here referring to his essay How To Make Our Ideas Clear (Ed.).]
344 C. S. Peirce

According to this, that real and sensible difference between one degree
of probability and another, in which the meaning of the distinction lies,
is that in the frequent employment of two different modes of inference,
one will carry truth with it oftener than the other. It is evident that this
is the only difference there is in the existing fact. Having certain premises,
a man draws a certain conclusion, and as far as this inference alone is
concerned the only possible practical question is whether that conclusion
is true or not, and between existence and nonexistence there is no middle
term. “Being only is and nothing is altogether not,” said Parmenides;
and this is in strict accordance with the analysis of the conception of
reality given in the last paper. For we found that the distinction of reality
and fiction depends on the supposition that sufficient investigation would
cause one opinion to be universally received and all others to be rejected.
That presupposition, involved in the very conceptions of reality and
figment, involves a complete sundering of the two. It is the heaven-and-
hell idea in the domain of thought. But, in the long run, there is a real
fact which corresponds to the idea of probability, and it is that a given
mode of inference sometimes proves successful and sometimes not, and
that in a ratio ultimately fixed. As we go on drawing inference after
inference of the given kind, during the first ten or hundred cases the ratio
of successes may be expected to show considerable fluctuations; but when
we come into the thousands and millions, these fluctuations become less
and less; and if we continue long enough, the ratio will approximate
toward a fixed limit. We may, therefore, define the probability of a mode
of argument as the proportion of cases in which it carries truth with it.
The inference from the premise, A, to the conclusion, B, depends, as
we have seen, on the guiding principle that if a fact of the class A is
true, a fact of the class B is true. The probability consists of the fraction
whose numerator is the number of times in which both A and B are
true, and whose denominator is the total number of times in which A is
true, whether B is so or not. Instead of speaking of this as the probability
of the inference, there is not the slightest objection to calling it the
probability that if A happens, B happens. But to speak of the probability
of the event B, without naming the condition, really has no meaning at
all. It is true that when it is perfectly obvious what condition is meant,
the ellipsis may be permitted. But we should avoid contracting the habit
of using language in this way (universal as the habit is), because it gives
rise to a vague way of thinking, as if the action of causation might either
determine an event to happen or determine it not to happen, or leave it
more or less free to happen or not, so as to give rise to an inherent chance
 TH E RE D AN D TH E B LACK 345

in regard to its occurrence. It is quite clear to me that some of the worst

and most persistent errors in the use of the doctrine of chances have
arisen from this vicious mode of expression.2

But there remains an important point to be cleared up. According to

what has been said, the idea of probability essentially belongs to a kind of
inference which is repeated indefinitely. An individual inference must be
either true or false, and can show no effect of probability; and, therefore,
in reference to a single case considered in itself, probability can have no
meaning. Yet if a man had to choose between drawing a card from a pack
containing twenty-five red cards and a black one, or from a pack containing
twenty-five black cards and a red one, and if the drawing of a red card
were destined to transport him to eternal felicity, and that of a black one
to consign him to everlasting woe, it would be folly to deny that he ought
to prefer the pack containing the larger portion of red cards, although,
from the nature of the risk, it could not be repeated. It is not easy to
reconcile this with our analysis of the conception of chance. But suppose
he should choose the red pack, and should draw the wrong card, what
consolation would he have? He might say that he had acted in accordance
with reason, but that would only show that his reason was absolutely
worthless. And if he should choose the right card, how could he regard it
as anything but a happy accident? He could not say that if he had drawn
from the other pack, he might have drawn the wrong one, because a
hypothetical proposition such as, “if A, then B,” means nothing with
reference to a single case. Truth consists in the existence of a real fact
corresponding to the true proposition. Corresponding to the proposition,
“if A, then B,” there may be the fact that whenever such an event as A
happens such an event as B happens. But in the case supposed, which has
no parallel as far as this man is concerned, there would be no real fact
whose existence could give any truth to the statement that, if he had
drawn from the other pack, he might have drawn a black card. Indeed,
since the validity of an inference consists in the truth of the hypothetical
proposition that if the premises be true the conclusion will also be true,
and since the only real fact which can correspond to such a proposition is
that whenever the antecedent is true the consequent is so also, it follows
that there can be no sense in reasoning in an isolated case at all.
These considerations appear, at first sight, to dispose of the difficulty
2. The conception of probability here set forth is substantially that first developed by
Mr. Venn, in his Logic of Chance. Of course, a vague apprehension of the idea had always
existed, but the problem was to make it perfectly clear, and to him belongs the credit of
first doing this.
346 C. S. Peirce

mentioned. Yet the case of the other side is not yet exhausted. Although
probability will probably manifest its effect in, say, a thousand risks, by a
certain proportion between the numbers of successes and failures, yet this,
as we have seen, is only to say that it certainly will, at length, do so. Now
the number of risks, the number of probable inferences, which a man
draws in his whole life, is a finite one, and he cannot be absolutely certain
that the mean result will accord with the probabilities at all. Taking all his
risks collectively, then, it cannot be certain that they will not fail, and his
case does not differ, except in degree, from the one last supposed. It is an
indubitable result of the theory of probabilities that every gambler, if he
continues long enough, must ultimately be ruined. Suppose he tries the
martingale, which some believe infallible, and which is, as I am informed,
disallowed in the gambling houses. In this method of playing, he first
bets say $1; if he loses it he bets $2; if he loses that he bets $4; if he loses
that he bets $8; if he then gains he has lost 1 + 2 + 4 = 7, and he has
gained $1 more; and no matter how many bets he loses, the first one he
gains will make him $1 richer than he was in the beginning. In that way,
he will probably gain at first; but, at last, the time will come when the run
of luck is so against him that he will not have money enough to double,
and must, therefore, let his bet go. This will probably happen before he has
won as much as he had in the first place, so that this run against him will
leave him poorer than he began; some time or other it will be sure to
happen. It is true that there is always a possibility of his winning any sum
the bank can pay, and we thus come upon a celebrated paradox that,
though he is certain to be ruined, the value of his expectation calculated
according to the usual rules (which omit this consideration) is large. But,
whether a gambler plays in this way or any other, the same thing is true,
namely, that if he plays long enough he will be sure some time to have
such a run against him as to exhaust his entire fortune. The same thing is
true of an insurance company. Let the directors take the utmost pains to
be independent of great conflagrations and pestilences, their actuaries can
tell them that, according to the doctrine of chances, the time must come,
at last, when their losses will bring them to a stop. They may tide over
such a crisis by extraordinary means, but then they will start again in a
weakened state, and the same thing will happen again all the sooner. An
actuary might be inclined to deny this, because he knows that the
expectation of his company is large, or perhaps (neglecting the interest
upon money) is infinite. But calculations of expectations leave out of
account the circumstance now under consideration, which reverses
the whole thing. However, I must not be understood as saying that
insurance is on this account unsound, more than other kinds of business.
 TH E RE D AN D TH E B LACK 347

All human affairs rest upon probabilities, and the same thing is true
everywhere. If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing
the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his
trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would
break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every
civilization does. In place of this we have death.
But what, without death, would happen to every man, with death must
happen to some man. At the same time, death makes the number of our
risks, of our inferences, finite, and so makes their mean result uncertain.
The very idea of probability and of reasoning rests on the assumption that
this number is indefinitely great. We are thus landed in the same difficulty
as before, and I can see but one solution of it. It seems to me that we are
driven to this, that logicality inexorably requires that our interests shall
not be limited. They must not stop at our own fate, but must embrace the
whole community. This community, again, must not be limited, but must
extend to all races of beings with whom we can come into immediate or
mediate intellectual relation. It must reach, however, vaguely, beyond
this geological epoch, beyond all bounds. He who would not sacrifice his
own soul to save the whole world, is, as it seems to me, illogical in all his
inferences, collectively. Logic is rooted in the social principle.
To be logical men should not be selfish; and, in point of fact, they are
not so selfish as they are thought. The willful prosecution of one’s desires
is a different thing from selfishness. The miser is not selfish; his money
does him no good, and he cares for what shall become of it after his
death. We are constantly speaking of our possessions on the Pacific, and
of our destiny as a republic, where no personal interests are involved, in
a way which shows that we have wider ones. We discuss with anxiety
the possible exhaustion of coal in some hundreds of years, or the cooling-
off of the sun in some millions, and show in the most popular of all
religious tenets that we can conceive the possibility of a man’s descending
into hell for the salvation of his fellows.
Now, it is not necessary for logicality that a man should himself be
capable of the heroism of self-sacrifice. It is sufficient that he should
recognize the possibility of it, should perceive that only that man’s
inferences who has it are really logical, and should consequently regard
his own as being only so far valid as they would be accepted by the hero.
So far as he thus refers his inferences to that standard, he becomes
identified with such a mind.
This makes logicality attainable enough. Sometimes we can personally
attain to heroism. The soldier who runs to scale a wall knows that he will
348 C. S. Peirce

probably be shot, but that is not all he cares for. He also knows that if all
the regiment, with whom in feeling he identifies himself, rush forward
at once, the fort will be taken. In other cases we can only imitate the
virtue. The man whom we have supposed as having to draw from the
two packs, who if he is not a logician will draw from the red pack from
mere habit, will see, if he is logician enough, that he cannot be logical
so long as he is concerned only with his own fate, but that that man who
should care equally for what was to happen in all possible cases of the
sort could act logically, and would draw from the pack with the most
red cards, and thus, though incapable himself of such sublimity, our
logician would imitate the effect of that man’s courage in order to share
his logicality.
But all this requires a conceived identification of one’s interests with
those of an unlimited community. Now there exist no reasons, and a
later discussion will show that there can be no reasons, for thinking that
the human race, or any intellectual race, will exist forever. On the other
hand, there can be no reason against it; 3 and, fortunately, as the whole
requirement is that we should have certain sentiments, there is nothing
in the facts to forbid our having a hope, or calm and cheerful wish, that
the community may last beyond any assignable date.
It may seem strange that I should put forward three sentiments, namely,
interest in an indefinite community, recognition of the possibility of
this interest being made supreme, and hope in the unlimited continuance
of intellectual activity, as indispensable requirements of logic. Yet, when
we consider that logic depends on a mere struggle to escape doubt, which,
as it terminates in action, must begin in emotion, and that, furthermore,
the only cause of our planting ourselves on reason is that other methods
of escaping doubt fail on account of the social impulse, why should we
wonder to find social sentiment presupposed in reasoning? As for the
other two sentiments which I find necessary, they are so only as supports
and accessories of that. It interests me to notice that these three sentiments
seem to be pretty much the same as that famous trio of charity, faith, and
hope, which, in the estimation of St. Paul, are the finest and greatest of
spiritual gifts. Neither Old nor New Testament is a textbook of the logic
of science, but the latter is certainly the highest existing authority in
regard to the dispositions of heart which a man ought to have.

3. I do not here admit an absolutely unknowable. Evidence could show us what would
probably be the case after any given lapse of time; and though a subsequent time might
be assigned which that evidence might not cover, yet further evidence would cover it.