The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science Science and Method Part 57

Once master of these definitions, it is to be shown that the point of application, the direction and the intensity suffice to determine a force; that two forces for which these three elements are the same are _always_ equivalent and may _always_ be replaced by one another, whether in equilibrium or in movement, and this whatever be the other forces acting.

It must be shown that two concurrent forces may always be replaced by a unique resultant; and that _this resultant remains the same_, whether the body be at rest or in motion and whatever be the other forces applied to it.

Finally it must be shown that forces thus defined satisfy the principle of the equality of action and reaction.

Experiment it is, and experiment alone, which can teach us all that. It will suffice to cite certain common experiments, which the scholars make daily without suspecting it, and to perform before them a few experiments, simple and well chosen.

It is after having pa.s.sed through all these meanders that one may represent forces by arrows, and I should even wish that in the development of the reasonings return were made from time to time from the symbol to the reality. For instance it would not be difficult to ill.u.s.trate the parallelogram of forces by aid of an apparatus formed of three strings, pa.s.sing over pulleys, stretched by weights and in equilibrium while pulling on the same point.

Knowing force, it is easy to define ma.s.s; this time the definition should be borrowed from dynamics; there is no way of doing otherwise, since the end to be attained is to give understanding of the distinction between ma.s.s and weight. Here again, the definition should be led up to by experiments; there is in fact a machine which seems made expressly to show what ma.s.s is, Atwood's machine; recall also the laws of the fall of bodies, that the acceleration of gravity is the same for heavy as for light bodies, and that it varies with the lat.i.tude, etc.

Now, if you tell me that all the methods I extol have long been applied in the schools, I shall rejoice over it more than be surprised at it. I know that on the whole our mathematical teaching is good. I do not wish it overturned; that would even distress me. I only desire betterments slowly progressive. This teaching should not be subjected to brusque oscillations under the capricious blast of ephemeral fads. In such tempests its high educative value would soon founder. A good and sound logic should continue to be its basis. The definition by example is always necessary, but it should prepare the way for the logical definition, it should not replace it; it should at least make this wished for, in the cases where the true logical definition can be advantageously given only in advanced teaching.

Understand that what I have here said does not imply giving up what I have written elsewhere. I have often had occasion to criticize certain definitions I extol to-day. These criticisms hold good completely. These definitions can only be provisory. But it is by way of them that we must pa.s.s.

CHAPTER III

MATHEMATICS AND LOGIC

INTRODUCTION

Can mathematics be reduced to logic without having to appeal to principles peculiar to mathematics? There is a whole school, abounding in ardor and full of faith, striving to prove it. They have their own special language, which is without words, using only signs. This language is understood only by the initiates, so that commoners are disposed to bow to the trenchant affirmations of the adepts. It is perhaps not unprofitable to examine these affirmations somewhat closely, to see if they justify the peremptory tone with which they are presented.

But to make clear the nature of the question it is necessary to enter upon certain historical details and in particular to recall the character of the works of Cantor.

Since long ago the notion of infinity had been introduced into mathematics; but this infinite was what philosophers call a _becoming_.

The mathematical infinite was only a quant.i.ty capable of increasing beyond all limit: it was a variable quant.i.ty of which it could not be said that it _had pa.s.sed_ all limits, but only that it _could pa.s.s_ them.

Cantor has undertaken to introduce into mathematics an _actual infinite_, that is to say a quant.i.ty which not only is capable of pa.s.sing all limits, but which is regarded as having already pa.s.sed them.

He has set himself questions like these: Are there more points in s.p.a.ce than whole numbers? Are there more points in s.p.a.ce than points in a plane? etc.

And then the number of whole numbers, that of the points of s.p.a.ce, etc., const.i.tutes what he calls a _transfinite cardinal number_, that is to say a cardinal number greater than all the ordinary cardinal numbers.

And he has occupied himself in comparing these transfinite cardinal numbers. In arranging in a proper order the elements of an aggregate containing an infinity of them, he has also imagined what he calls transfinite ordinal numbers upon which I shall not dwell.

Many mathematicians followed his lead and set a series of questions of the sort. They so familiarized themselves with transfinite numbers that they have come to make the theory of finite numbers depend upon that of Cantor's cardinal numbers. In their eyes, to teach arithmetic in a way truly logical, one should begin by establis.h.i.+ng the general properties of transfinite cardinal numbers, then distinguish among them a very small cla.s.s, that of the ordinary whole numbers. Thanks to this detour, one might succeed in proving all the propositions relative to this little cla.s.s (that is to say all our arithmetic and our algebra) without using any principle foreign to logic. This method is evidently contrary to all sane psychology; it is certainly not in this way that the human mind proceeded in constructing mathematics; so its authors do not dream, I think, of introducing it into secondary teaching. But is it at least logic, or, better, is it correct? It may be doubted.

The geometers who have employed it are however very numerous. They have acc.u.mulated formulas and they have thought to free themselves from what was not pure logic by writing memoirs where the formulas no longer alternate with explanatory discourse as in the books of ordinary mathematics, but where this discourse has completely disappeared.

Unfortunately they have reached contradictory results, what are called the _cantorian antinomies_, to which we shall have occasion to return.

These contradictions have not discouraged them and they have tried to modify their rules so as to make those disappear which had already shown themselves, without being sure, for all that, that new ones would not manifest themselves.

It is time to administer justice on these exaggerations. I do not hope to convince them; for they have lived too long in this atmosphere.

Besides, when one of their demonstrations has been refuted, we are sure to see it resurrected with insignificant alterations, and some of them have already risen several times from their ashes. Such long ago was the Lernaean hydra with its famous heads which always grew again. Hercules got through, since his hydra had only nine heads, or eleven; but here there are too many, some in England, some in Germany, in Italy, in France, and he would have to give up the struggle. So I appeal only to men of good judgment unprejudiced.

I

In these latter years numerous works have been published on pure mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics, trying to separate and isolate the logical elements of mathematical reasoning. These works have been a.n.a.lyzed and expounded very clearly by M. Couturat in a book ent.i.tled: _The Principles of Mathematics_.

For M. Couturat, the new works, and in particular those of Russell and Peano, have finally settled the controversy, so long pending between Leibnitz and Kant. They have shown that there are no synthetic judgments a priori (Kant's phrase to designate judgments which can neither be demonstrated a.n.a.lytically, nor reduced to ident.i.ties, nor established experimentally), they have shown that mathematics is entirely reducible to logic and that intuition here plays no role.

This is what M. Couturat has set forth in the work just cited; this he says still more explicitly in his Kant jubilee discourse, so that I heard my neighbor whisper: "I well see this is the centenary of Kant's _death_."

Can we subscribe to this conclusive condemnation? I think not, and I shall try to show why.

II

What strikes us first in the new mathematics is its purely formal character: "We think," says Hilbert, "three sorts of _things_, which we shall call points, straights and planes. We convene that a straight shall be determined by two points, and that in place of saying this straight is determined by these two points, we may say it pa.s.ses through these two points, or that these two points are situated on this straight." What these _things_ are, not only we do not know, but we should not seek to know. We have no need to, and one who never had seen either point or straight or plane could geometrize as well as we. That the phrase _to pa.s.s through_, or the phrase _to be situated upon_ may arouse in us no image, the first is simply a synonym of to _be determined_ and the second of _to determine_.

Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means. The geometer might be replaced by the _logic piano_ imagined by Stanley Jevons; or, if you choose, a machine might be imagined where the a.s.sumptions were put in at one end, while the theorems came out at the other, like the legendary Chicago machine where the pigs go in alive and come out transformed into hams and sausages. No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he does.

I do not make this formal character of his geometry a reproach to Hilbert. This is the way he should go, given the problem he set himself.

He wished to reduce to a minimum the number of the fundamental a.s.sumptions of geometry and completely enumerate them; now, in reasonings where our mind remains active, in those where intuition still plays a part, in living reasonings, so to speak, it is difficult not to introduce an a.s.sumption or a postulate which pa.s.ses unperceived. It is therefore only after having carried back all the geometric reasonings to a form purely mechanical that he could be sure of having accomplished his design and finished his work.

What Hilbert did for geometry, others have tried to do for arithmetic and a.n.a.lysis. Even if they had entirely succeeded, would the Kantians be finally condemned to silence? Perhaps not, for in reducing mathematical thought to an empty form, it is certainly mutilated.

Even admitting it were established that all the theorems could be deduced by procedures purely a.n.a.lytic, by simple logical combinations of a finite number of a.s.sumptions, and that these a.s.sumptions are only conventions; the philosopher would still have the right to investigate the origins of these conventions, to see why they have been judged preferable to the contrary conventions.

And then the logical correctness of the reasonings leading from the a.s.sumptions to the theorems is not the only thing which should occupy us. The rules of perfect logic, are they the whole of mathematics? As well say the whole art of playing chess reduces to the rules of the moves of the pieces. Among all the constructs which can be built up of the materials furnished by logic, choice must be made; the true geometer makes this choice judiciously because he is guided by a sure instinct, or by some vague consciousness of I know not what more profound and more hidden geometry, which alone gives value to the edifice constructed.

To seek the origin of this instinct, to study the laws of this deep geometry, felt, not stated, would also be a fine employment for the philosophers who do not want logic to be all. But it is not at this point of view I wish to put myself, it is not thus I wish to consider the question. The instinct mentioned is necessary for the inventor, but it would seem at first we might do without it in studying the science once created. Well, what I wish to investigate is if it be true that, the principles of logic once admitted, one can, I do not say discover, but demonstrate, all the mathematical verities without making a new appeal to intuition.

III

I once said no to this question:[12] should our reply be modified by the recent works? My saying no was because "the principle of complete induction" seemed to me at once necessary to the mathematician and irreducible to logic. The statement of this principle is: "If a property be true of the number 1, and if we establish that it is true of _n_ + 1 provided it be of _n_, it will be true of all the whole numbers."

Therein I see the mathematical reasoning par excellence. I did not mean to say, as has been supposed, that all mathematical reasonings can be reduced to an application of this principle. Examining these reasonings closely, we there should see applied many other a.n.a.logous principles, presenting the same essential characteristics. In this category of principles, that of complete induction is only the simplest of all and this is why I have chosen it as type.

[12] See _Science and Hypothesis_, chapter I.

The current name, principle of complete induction, is not justified.

This mode of reasoning is none the less a true mathematical induction which differs from ordinary induction only by its cert.i.tude.

IV

DEFINITIONS AND a.s.sUMPTIONS

The existence of such principles is a difficulty for the uncompromising logicians; how do they pretend to get out of it? The principle of complete induction, they say, is not an a.s.sumption properly so called or a synthetic judgment _a priori_; it is just simply the definition of whole number. It is therefore a simple convention. To discuss this way of looking at it, we must examine a little closely the relations between definitions and a.s.sumptions.

Let us go back first to an article by M. Couturat on mathematical definitions which appeared in _l'Enseignement mathematique_, a magazine published by Gauthier-Villars and by Georg at Geneva. We shall see there a distinction between the _direct definition and the definition by postulates_.

"The definition by postulates," says M. Couturat, "applies not to a single notion, but to a system of notions; it consists in enumerating the fundamental relations which unite them and which enable us to demonstrate all their other properties; these relations are postulates."