#The resolution of the French Academy.#
The Proceedings of the French Academy for the year 1775 contain at page 61 the resolution of the Academy not to examine from that time on, any so-called solutions of the quadrature of the circle that might be handed in. The Academy was driven to this determination by the overwhelming multitude of professed solutions of the famous problem, which were sent to it every month in the year,—solutions which of course were an invariable attestation of the ignorance and self-consciousness of their authors, but which suffered collectively from a very important error in mathematics: they were wrong. Since that time all professed solutions of the problem received by the Academy find a sure haven in the waste-basket, and remain unanswered for all time. The circle-squarer, however, sees in this high-handed manner of rejection only the envy of the great towards his grand intellectual discovery. He is determined to meet with recognition, and appeals therefore to the public. The newspapers must obtain for him the appreciation that scientific societies have denied. And every year the old mathematical sea-serpent more than once disports itself in the columns of our papers, that a Mr. N. N., of P. P., has at last solved the problem of the quadrature of the circle.
#General ignorance of quadrators.#
But what kind of people are these circle-squarers, when examined by the light? Almost always they will be found to be imperfectly educated persons, whose mathematical knowledge does not exceed that of a modern college freshman. It is seldom that they know accurately what the requirements of the problem are and what its nature; they never know the two and a half thousand years' history of the problem; and they have no idea whatever of the important investigations and results which have been made with reference to the problem by great and real mathematicians in every century down to our time.
#A cyclometric type.#
Yet great as is the quantum of ignorance that circle-squarers intermix with their intellectual products, the lavish supply of conceit and self-consciousness with which they season their performances is still greater. I have not far to go to furnish a verification of this. A book printed in Hamburg in the year 1840 lies before me, in which the author thanks Almighty God at every second page that He has selected him and no one else to solve the 'problem phenomenal' of mathematics, "so long sought for, so fervently desired, and attempted by millions." After the modest author has proclaimed himself the unmasker of Archimedes's deceit, he says: "It thus has pleased our mother nature to withhold this mathematical jewel from the eye of human investigation, until she thought it fitting to reveal truth to simplicity."
This will suffice to show the great self-consciousness of the author. But it does not suffice to prove his ignorance. He has no conception of mathematical demonstration; he takes it for granted that things are so because they seem so to him. Errors of logic, also, are abundantly found in his book. But apart from this general incorrectness let us see wherein the real gist of his fallacy consists. It requires considerable labor to find out what this is from the turgid language and bombastic style in which the author has buried his conclusions. But it is this. The author inscribes a square in a circle, circumscribes another about it, then points out that the inside square is made up of four congruent triangles, whereas the circumscribed square is made up of eight such triangles; from which fact, seeing that the circle is larger than the one square and smaller than the other, he draws the bold conclusion that the circle is equal in area to six such triangles. It is hardly conceivable that a rational being could infer that something which is greater than 4 and less than 8 must necessarily be 6. But with a man that attempts the squaring of the circle this kind of ratiocination is possible.
Similarly in the case of all other attempted solutions of the problem, either logical fallacies or violations of elementary arithmetical or geometrical truths may be pointed out. Only they are not always of such a trivial nature as in the book just mentioned.
Let us now inquire whence the inclination arises which leads people to take up the quadrature of the circle and to attempt to solve it.
#The allurements of the problem.#