The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science Science and Method Part 56

The engineer should receive a complete mathematical education, but for what should it serve him?

To see the different aspects of things and see them quickly; he has no time to hunt mice. It is necessary that, in the complex physical objects presented to him, he should promptly recognize the point where the mathematical tools we have put in his hands can take hold. How could he do it if we should leave between instruments and objects the deep chasm hollowed out by the logicians?

9. Besides the engineers, other scholars, less numerous, are in their turn to become teachers; they therefore must go to the very bottom; a knowledge deep and rigorous of the first principles is for them before all indispensable. But this is no reason not to cultivate in them intuition; for they would get a false idea of the science if they never looked at it except from a single side, and besides they could not develop in their students a quality they did not themselves possess.

For the pure geometer himself, this faculty is necessary; it is by logic one demonstrates, by intuition one invents. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better. You know how to recognize if a combination is correct; what a predicament if you have not the art of choosing among all the possible combinations. Logic tells us that on such and such a way we are sure not to meet any obstacle; it does not say which way leads to the end. For that it is necessary to see the end from afar, and the faculty which teaches us to see is intuition. Without it the geometer would be like a writer who should be versed in grammar but had no ideas. Now how could this faculty develop if, as soon as it showed itself, we chase it away and proscribe it, if we learn to set it at naught before knowing the good of it.

And here permit a parenthesis to insist upon the importance of written exercises. Written compositions are perhaps not sufficiently emphasized in certain examinations, at the polytechnic school, for instance. I am told they would close the door against very good scholars who have mastered the course, thoroughly understanding it, and who nevertheless are incapable of making the slightest application. I have just said the word understand has several meanings: such students only understand in the first way, and we have seen that suffices neither to make an engineer nor a geometer. Well, since choice must be made, I prefer those who understand completely.

10. But is the art of sound reasoning not also a precious thing, which the professor of mathematics ought before all to cultivate? I take good care not to forget that. It should occupy our attention and from the very beginning. I should be distressed to see geometry degenerate into I know not what tachymetry of low grade and I by no means subscribe to the extreme doctrines of certain German Oberlehrer. But there are occasions enough to exercise the scholars in correct reasoning in the parts of mathematics where the inconveniences I have pointed out do not present themselves. There are long chains of theorems where absolute logic has reigned from the very first and, so to speak, quite naturally, where the first geometers have given us models we should constantly imitate and admire.

It is in the exposition of first principles that it is necessary to avoid too much subtility; there it would be most discouraging and moreover useless. We can not prove everything and we can not define everything; and it will always be necessary to borrow from intuition; what does it matter whether it be done a little sooner or a little later, provided that in using correctly premises it has furnished us, we learn to reason soundly.

11. Is it possible to fulfill so many opposing conditions? Is this possible in particular when it is a question of giving a definition? How find a concise statement satisfying at once the uncompromising rules of logic, our desire to grasp the place of the new notion in the totality of the science, our need of thinking with images? Usually it will not be found, and this is why it is not enough to state a definition; it must be prepared for and justified.

What does that mean? You know it has often been said: every definition implies an a.s.sumption, since it affirms the existence of the object defined. The definition then will not be justified, from the purely logical point of view, until one shall have _proved_ that it involves no contradiction, neither in the terms, nor with the verities previously admitted.

But this is not enough; the definition is stated to us as a convention; but most minds will revolt if we wish to impose it upon them as an _arbitrary_ convention. They will be satisfied only when you have answered numerous questions.

Usually mathematical definitions, as M. Liard has shown, are veritable constructions built up wholly of more simple notions. But why a.s.semble these elements in this way when a thousand other combinations were possible?

Is it by caprice? If not, why had this combination more right to exist than all the others? To what need does it respond? How was it foreseen that it would play an important role in the development of the science, that it would abridge our reasonings and our calculations? Is there in nature some familiar object which is so to speak the rough and vague image of it?

This is not all; if you answer all these questions in a satisfactory manner, we shall see indeed that the new-born had the right to be baptized; but neither is the choice of a name arbitrary; it is needful to explain by what a.n.a.logies one has been guided and that if a.n.a.logous names have been given to different things, these things at least differ only in material and are allied in form; that their properties are a.n.a.logous and so to say parallel.

At this cost we may satisfy all inclinations. If the statement is correct enough to please the logician, the justification will satisfy the intuitive. But there is still a better procedure; wherever possible, the justification should precede the statement and prepare for it; one should be led on to the general statement by the study of some particular examples.

Still another thing: each of the parts of the statement of a definition has as aim to distinguish the thing to be defined from a cla.s.s of other neighboring objects. The definition will be understood only when you have shown, not merely the object defined, but the neighboring objects from which it is proper to distinguish it, when you have given a grasp of the difference and when you have added explicitly: this is why in stating the definition I have said this or that.

But it is time to leave generalities and examine how the somewhat abstract principles I have expounded may be applied in arithmetic, geometry, a.n.a.lysis and mechanics.

ARITHMETIC

12. The whole number is not to be defined; in return, one ordinarily defines the operations upon whole numbers; I believe the scholars learn these definitions by heart and attach no meaning to them. For that there are two reasons: first they are made to learn them too soon, when their mind as yet feels no need of them; then these definitions are not satisfactory from the logical point of view. A good definition for addition is not to be found just simply because we must stop and can not define everything. It is not defining addition to say it consists in adding. All that can be done is to start from a certain number of concrete examples and say: the operation we have performed is called addition.

For subtraction it is quite otherwise; it may be logically defined as the operation inverse to addition; but should we begin in that way? Here also start with examples, show on these examples the reciprocity of the two operations; thus the definition will be prepared for and justified.

Just so again for multiplication; take a particular problem; show that it may be solved by adding several equal numbers; then show that we reach the result more quickly by a multiplication, an operation the scholars already know how to do by routine and out of that the logical definition will issue naturally.

Division is defined as the operation inverse to multiplication; but begin by an example taken from the familiar notion of part.i.tion and show on this example that multiplication reproduces the dividend.

There still remain the operations on fractions. The only difficulty is for multiplication. It is best to expound first the theory of proportion; from it alone can come a logical definition; but to make acceptable the definitions met at the beginning of this theory, it is necessary to prepare for them by numerous examples taken from cla.s.sic problems of the rule of three, taking pains to introduce fractional data.

Neither should we fear to familiarize the scholars with the notion of proportion by geometric images, either by appealing to what they remember if they have already studied geometry, or in having recourse to direct intuition, if they have not studied it, which besides will prepare them to study it. Finally I shall add that after defining multiplication of fractions, it is needful to justify this definition by showing that it is commutative, a.s.sociative and distributive, and calling to the attention of the auditors that this is established to justify the definition.

One sees what a role geometric images play in all this; and this role is justified by the philosophy and the history of the science. If arithmetic had remained free from all admixture of geometry, it would have known only the whole number; it is to adapt itself to the needs of geometry that it invented anything else.

GEOMETRY

In geometry we meet forthwith the notion of the straight line. Can the straight line be defined? The well-known definition, the shortest path from one point to another, scarcely satisfies me. I should start simply with the _ruler_ and show at first to the scholar how one may verify a ruler by turning; this verification is the true definition of the straight line; the straight line is an axis of rotation. Next he should be shown how to verify the ruler by sliding and he would have one of the most important properties of the straight line.

As to this other property of being the shortest path from one point to another, it is a theorem which can be demonstrated apodictically, but the demonstration is too delicate to find a place in secondary teaching.

It will be worth more to show that a ruler previously verified fits on a stretched thread. In presence of difficulties like these one need not dread to multiply a.s.sumptions, justifying them by rough experiments.

It is needful to grant these a.s.sumptions, and if one admits a few more of them than is strictly necessary, the evil is not very great; the essential thing is to learn to reason soundly on the a.s.sumptions admitted. Uncle Sarcey, who loved to repeat, often said that at the theater the spectator accepts willingly all the postulates imposed upon him at the beginning, but the curtain once raised, he becomes uncompromising on the logic. Well, it is just the same in mathematics.

For the circle, we may start with the compa.s.ses; the scholars will recognize at the first glance the curve traced; then make them observe that the distance of the two points of the instrument remains constant, that one of these points is fixed and the other movable, and so we shall be led naturally to the logical definition.

The definition of the plane implies an axiom and this need not be hidden. Take a drawing board and show that a moving ruler may be kept constantly in complete contact with this plane and yet retain three degrees of freedom. Compare with the cylinder and the cone, surfaces on which an applied straight retains only two degrees of freedom; next take three drawing boards; show first that they will glide while remaining applied to one another and this with three degrees of freedom; and finally to distinguish the plane from the sphere, show that two of these boards which fit a third will fit each other.

Perhaps you are surprised at this incessant employment of moving things; this is not a rough artifice; it is much more philosophic than one would at first think. What is geometry for the philosopher? It is the study of a group. And what group? That of the motions of solid bodies. How define this group then without moving some solids?

Should we retain the cla.s.sic definition of parallels and say parallels are two coplanar straights which do not meet, however far they be prolonged? No, since this definition is negative, since it is unverifiable by experiment, and consequently can not be regarded as an immediate datum of intuition. No, above all because it is wholly strange to the notion of group, to the consideration of the motion of solid bodies which is, as I have said, the true source of geometry. Would it not be better to define first the rectilinear translation of an invariable figure, as a motion wherein all the points of this figure have rectilinear trajectories; to show that such a translation is possible by making a square glide on a ruler?

From this experimental ascertainment, set up as an a.s.sumption, it would be easy to derive the notion of parallel and Euclid's postulate itself.

MECHANICS

I need not return to the definition of velocity, or acceleration, or other kinematic notions; they may be advantageously connected with that of the derivative.

I shall insist, on the other hand, upon the dynamic notions of force and ma.s.s.

I am struck by one thing: how very far the young people who have received a high-school education are from applying to the real world the mechanical laws they have been taught. It is not only that they are incapable of it; they do not even think of it. For them the world of science and the world of reality are separated by an impervious part.i.tion wall.

If we try to a.n.a.lyze the state of mind of our scholars, this will astonish us less. What is for them the real definition of force? Not that which they recite, but that which, crouching in a nook of their mind, from there directs it wholly. Here is the definition: forces are arrows with which one makes parallelograms. These arrows are imaginary things which have nothing to do with anything existing in nature. This would not happen if they had been shown forces in reality before representing them by arrows.

How shall we define force?

I think I have elsewhere sufficiently shown there is no good logical definition. There is the anthropomorphic definition, the sensation of muscular effort; this is really too rough and nothing useful can be drawn from it.

Here is how we should go: first, to make known the genus force, we must show one after the other all the species of this genus; they are very numerous and very different; there is the pressure of fluids on the insides of the vases wherein they are contained; the tension of threads; the elasticity of a spring; the gravity working on all the molecules of a body; friction; the normal mutual action and reaction of two solids in contact.

This is only a qualitative definition; it is necessary to learn to measure force. For that begin by showing that one force may be replaced by another without destroying equilibrium; we may find the first example of this subst.i.tution in the balance and Borda's double weighing.

Then show that a weight may be replaced, not only by another weight, but by force of a different nature; for instance, p.r.o.ny's brake permits replacing weight by friction.

From all this arises the notion of the equivalence of two forces.

The direction of a force must be defined. If a force _F_ is equivalent to another force _F'_ applied to the body considered by means of a stretched string, so that _F_ may be replaced by _F'_ without affecting the equilibrium, then the point of attachment of the string will be by definition the point of application of the force _F'_, and that of the equivalent force _F_; the direction of the string will be the direction of the force _F'_ and that of the equivalent force _F_.

From that, pa.s.s to the comparison of the magnitude of forces. If a force can replace two others with the same direction, it equals their sum; show for example that a weight of 20 grams may replace two 10-gram weights.

Is this enough? Not yet. We now know how to compare the intensity of two forces which have the same direction and same point of application; we must learn to do it when the directions are different. For that, imagine a string stretched by a weight and pa.s.sing over a pulley; we shall say that the tensor of the two legs of the string is the same and equal to the tension weight.

This definition of ours enables us to compare the tensions of the two pieces of our string, and, using the preceding definitions, to compare any two forces having the same direction as these two pieces. It should be justified by showing that the tension of the last piece of the string remains the same for the same tensor weight, whatever be the number and the disposition of the reflecting pulleys. It has still to be completed by showing this is only true if the pulleys are frictionless.