[2124]. It is worth observing that some of those who disparage some branch of study in which they are deficient, will often affect more contempt for it than they really feel. And not unfrequently they will take pains to have it thought that they are themselves well versed in it, or that they easily might be, if they thought it worth while;—in short, that it is not from hanging too high that the grapes are called sour.
Thus, Swift, in the person of Gulliver, represents himself, while deriding the extravagant passion for Mathematics among the Laputians, as being a good mathematician. Yet he betrays his utter ignorance, by speaking “of a pudding in the form of a cycloid:” evidently taking the cycloid for a figure, instead of a line. This may help to explain the difficulty he is said to have had in obtaining his Degree.—Whately, R.
Annotations to Bacon’s Essays, Essay L.
[2125]. 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 ascendency 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.—Whitehead, A. N.
An Introduction to Mathematics (New York, 1911), p. 10.
Here I am as you may see
a2 + b2 − ab