Math in Laputa
The third part of
Jonathan Swift's book
Gulliver's Travels (1726)
has the title
A voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan
.
Mathematics turns out to play an important role in Laputa, as will be
evident from the quotations below.
I was led to this by an article
Zeggen wat niet is by H. Brandt Corstius
in
NRC Handelsblad, 29 March 1996.
At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of
presence, where I saw the King seated on his throne, attended on each
side by persons of prime quality. Before the throne was a large table
filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical
instruments of all
kinds. His Majesty took not the least notice of us, although our
entrance was not without sufficient noise, by the concourse of all
persons belonging to the court. But he was then
deep in a problem,
and we attended at least an hour, before he could solve it. There stood by
him on each side a young page, with flaps in their hands, and when
they saw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth, and
the other his right ear; at which he started like one awakened on the
sudden, and looking towards me and the company I was in, recollected
the occasion of our coming, whereof he had been informed before. He
spoke some words, whereupon immediately a young man with a flap came
up to my side, and flapped me gently on the right ear; but I made
signs, as well as I could, that I had no occasion for such an
instrument; which, as I afterwards found, gave his Majesty and the
whole court a very mean opinion of my understanding.
(from Chapter II)
My dinner was brought, and four persons of quality, whom I remembered
to have seen very near the King's person, did me the honor to dine
with me. We had two courses of three dishes each. In the first course
there was a shoulder of mutton, cut into an equilateral triangle, a
piece of beef into a rhomboides, and a pudding into a cycloid. The
second course was two ducks, trussed up into the form of fiddles;
sausages and puddings resembling flutes and hautboys, and a breast of
veal in the shape of a harp. The servants cut our bread into cones,
cylinders, parallelograms, and several other
mathematical figures.
(from Chapter II)
The knowledge I had in mathematics gave me great assistance in
acquiring their phraseology, which depended much upon that science and
music; and in the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are
perpetually conversant in lines and figures. If they would, for
example, praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they
describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other
geometrical terms, or by words of art drawn from music,
needless here
to repeat. I observed in the King's kitchen all sorts of mathematical
and musical instruments, after the figures of which they cut up the
joints that were served to his Majesty's table.
(from Chapter II)
Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevel without one right
angle in any apartment, and this defect arises from the contempt they
bear to practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanic,
those instructions they give being too refined for the intellectuals
of their workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes. And although
they are dexterous enough upon a piece of paper in the management of
the rule, the pencil, and the divider, yet in the common actions and
behavior of life, I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy
people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other
subjects, except those of mathematics and music. They are very bad
reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen
to be of the right opinion, which is seldom their case. Imagination,
fancy, and invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words
in their language by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole
compass of their thoughts and mind being shut up within the two
forementioned sciences.
(from Chapter II)
Most of them, and especially those who deal in the astronomical part,
have great faith in judicial astrology, although they are ashamed to
own it publicly. But what I chiefly admired, and thought altogether
unaccountable, was the strong disposition I observed in them towards
news and politics, perpetually enquiring into public affairs, giving
their judgments in matters of state, and passionately disputing every
inch of a party opinion. I have indeed observed the same disposition
among most of the mathematicians I have known in Europe,
although I
could never discover the least analogy between the two sciences;
unless those people suppose, that because the smallest circle hath as
many degrees as the largest, therefore the regulation and management
of the world require no more abilities than the handling and turning
of a globe. But I rather take this quality to spring from a very
common infirmity of human nature, inclining us to be more curious and
conceited in matters where we have least concern, and for which we are
least adapted either by study or nature.
(from Chapter II)
The women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they contemn their
husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is
always a considerable number from the continent below, attending at
court, either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or
their own particular occasions, but are much despised, because they
want the same endowments. Among these the ladies choose their
gallants: but the vexation is, that they act with too much ease and
security, for the husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the
mistress and lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before
his face, if he be but provided with paper and implements, and without
his flapper at his side.
(from Chapter II)
In about a month's time I had made a tolerable proficiency in their
language, and was able to answer most of the King's questions, when I
had the honor to attend him. His Majesty discovered not the least
curiosity to inquire into the laws, government, history, religion, or
manners of the countries where I had been, but confined his questions
to the state of mathematics, and received the account I gave
him with
great contempt and indifference, though often roused by his flapper on
each side.
(from Chapter II)
Although I cannot say that I was ill treated in this island, yet I
must confess I thought myself too much neglected, not without some
degree of contempt. For neither prince nor people appeared to be
curious in any part of knowledge, except mathematics and
music,
wherein I was far their inferior, and upon that account very little
regarded.
(from Chapter IV)
I was at the mathematical school, where the master taught his
pupils
after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The proposition and
demonstration were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed
of a cephalic tincture. This the student was to swallow upon a fasting
stomach, and for three days following eat nothing but bread and
water. As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain,
bearing the proposition along with it. But the success has not
hitherto been answerable, partly by some error in the quantum or
composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this
bolus is so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and discharge
it upwards before it can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded
to use so long an abstinence as the prescription required.
(from Chapter V)
He (Aristotle) said, that new systems of nature were but new fashions,
which would vary in every age; and even those who pretend to demonstrate them
from mathematical principles, would flourish but a short
period of time,
and be out of vogue when that was determined.
(from Chapter VIII)
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