A Budget of Paradoxes Volume I Part 14

FALLACIES IN A THEORY OF ANNUITIES.

An Essay to ascertain the value of leases, and annuities for years and lives. By W[eyman] L[ee]. London, 1737, 8vo.

A valuation of Annuities and Leases certain, for a single life. By Weyman Lee, Esq. of the Inner Temple. London, 1751, 8vo. Third edition, 1773.

Every branch of exact science has its paradoxer. The world at large cannot tell with certainty who is right in such questions as squaring the circle, etc. Mr. Weyman Lee[344] was the a.s.sailant of what all who had studied called demonstration in the question of annuities. He can be exposed to the world: for his error arose out of his not being able to see that the whole is the sum of all its parts.

By an annuity, say of 100, now bought, is meant that the buyer is to have for his money 100 in a year, if he be then alive, 100 at the end of two years, if then alive, and so on. It is clear that he would buy a life annuity if he should buy the first 100 in one office, the second in another, and so on. All the difference between buying the whole from one office and buying all the separate contingent payments at different offices, is immaterial to calculation. Mr. Lee would have agreed with the rest of the world about the payments to be made to the several different offices, in consideration of their several contracts: but he differed from every one else about the sum to be paid to _one_ office. He contended that the way to value an annuity is to find out the term of years which the individual has an even chance of surviving, and to charge for the life annuity the value of an annuity certain for that term.

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It is very common to say that Lee took the average life, or expectation, as it is wrongly called, for his term: and this I have done myself, taking the common story. Having exposed the absurdity of this second supposition, taking it for Lee's, in my _Formal Logic_,[345] I will now do the same with the first.

A mathematical truth is true in its extreme cases. Lee's principle is that an annuity on a life is the annuity made certain for the term within which it is an even chance the life drops. If, then, of a thousand persons, 500 be sure to die within a year, and the other 500 be immortal, Lee's price of an annuity to any one of these persons is the present value of one payment: for one year is the term which each one has an even chance of surviving and not surviving. But the true value is obviously half that of a perpetual annuity: so that at 5 percent Lee's rule would give less than the tenth of the true value. It must be said for the poor circle-squarers, that they never err so much as this.

Lee would have said, if alive, that I have put an _extreme case_: but any _universal_ truth is true in its extreme cases. It is not fair to bring forward an extreme case against a person who is speaking as of usual occurrences: but it is quite fair when, as frequently happens, the proposer insists upon a perfectly general acceptance of his a.s.sertion. And yet many who go the whole hog protest against being tickled with the tail. Counsel in court are good instances: they are paradoxers by trade. June 13, 1849, at Hertford, there was an action about a s.h.i.+p, insured against a _total_ loss: some planks were saved, and the underwriters refused to pay. Mr. Z.

(for deft.) "There can be no degrees of totality; and some timbers were saved."--L. C. B. "Then if the vessel were burned to the water's edge, and some rope saved in the boat, there would be no total loss."--Mr. Z. "This is putting a very extreme case."--L. C. B. "The argument {159} would go that length." What would _Judge_ Z.--as he now is--say to the extreme case beginning somewhere between six planks and a bit of rope?

MONTUCLA'S WORK ON THE QUADRATURE.

Histoire des recherches sur la quadrature du cercle ... avec une addition concernant les problemes de la duplication du cube et de la trisection de l'angle. Paris, 1754, 12mo. [By Montucla.]

This is _the_ history of the subject.[346] It was a little episode to the great history of mathematics by Montucla, of which the first edition appeared in 1758. There was much addition at the end of the fourth volume of the second edition; this is clearly by Montucla, though the bulk of the volume is put together, with help from Montucla's papers, by Lalande.[347]

There is also a second edition of the history of the quadrature, Paris, 1831, 8vo, edited, I think, by Lacroix; of which it is the great fault that it makes hardly any use of the additional matter just mentioned.

Montucla is an admirable historian when he is writing from his own direct knowledge: it is a sad pity that he did not tell us when he was depending on others. We are not to trust a quarter of his book, and we must read many other books to know which quarter. The fault is common enough, but Montucla's good three-quarters is so good that the fault is greater in him than in most others: I mean the fault of not acknowledging; for an historian cannot read everything. But it must be said that mankind give little encouragement to candor on this point. Hallam, in his {160} _History of Literature_, states with his own usual instinct of honesty every case in which he depends upon others: Montucla does not. And what is the consequence?--Montucla is trusted, and believed in, and cried up in the bulk; while the smallest talker can lament that Hallam should be so unequal and apt to depend on others, without remembering to mention that Hallam himself gives the information. As to a universal history of any great subject being written entirely upon primary knowledge, it is a thing of which the possibility is not yet proved by an example. Delambre attempted it with astronomy, and was removed by death before it was finished,[348] to say nothing of the gaps he left.

Montucla was nothing of a bibliographer, and his descriptions of books in the first edition were insufficient. The Abbe Rive[349] fell foul of him, and as the phrase is, gave it him. Montucla took it with great good humor, tried to mend, and, in his second edition, wished his critic had lived to see the _vernis de bibliographe_ which he had given himself.

I have seen Montucla set down as an _esprit fort_, more than once: wrongly, I think. When he mentions Barrow's[350] address to the Almighty, he adds, "On voit, au reste, par la, que Barrow etoit un pauvre philosophe; car il croyait en l'immortalite de l'ame, et en une Divinite autre que la nature {161} universelle."[351] This is irony, not an expression of opinion. In the book of mathematical recreations which Montucla constructed upon that of Ozanam,[352] and Ozanam upon that of Van Etten,[353] now best known in England by Hutton's similar treatment of Montucla, there is an amusing chapter on the quadrators. Montucla refers to his own anonymous book of 1754 as a curious book published by Jombert.[354] He seems to have been a little ashamed of writing about circle-squarers: what a slap on the face for an unborn Budgeteer!

Montucla says, speaking of France, that he finds three notions prevalent among the cyclometers: (1) that there is a large reward offered for success; (2) that the longitude problem depends on that success; (3) that the solution is the great end and object of geometry. The same three {162} notions are equally prevalent among the same cla.s.s in England. No reward has ever been offered by the government of either country. The longitude problem in no way depends upon perfect solution; existing approximations are sufficient to a point of accuracy far beyond what can be wanted.[355]

And geometry, content with what exists, has long pa.s.sed on to other matters. Sometimes a cyclometer persuades a skipper who has made land in the wrong place that the astronomers are in fault, for using a wrong measure of the circle; and the skipper thinks it a very comfortable solution! And this is the utmost that the problem ever has to do with longitude.

ANTINEWTONIANISMUS.

Antinewtonianismus.[356] By Caelestino Cominale,[357] M.D. Naples, 1754 and 1756, 2 vols. 4to.

The first volume upsets the theory of light; the second vacuum, vis inertiae, gravitation, and attraction. I confess I never attempted these big Latin volumes, numbering 450 closely-printed quarto pages. The man who slays Newton in a pamphlet is the man for me. But I will lend them to anybody who will give security, himself in 500, and two sureties in 250 each, that he will read them through, and give a full abstract; and I will not exact security for their return. I have never seen any mention of this book: it has a printer, but not a publisher, as happens with so many unrecorded books.

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OFFICIAL BLOW TO CIRCLE SQUARERS.

1755. The French Academy of Sciences came to the determination not to examine any more quadratures or kindred problems. This was the consequence, no doubt, of the publication of Montucla's book: the time was well chosen; for that book was a full justification of the resolution. The Royal Society followed the same course, I believe, a few years afterwards. When our Board of Longitude was in existence, most of its time was consumed in listening to schemes, many of which included the quadrature of the circle. It is certain that many quadrators have imagined the longitude problem to be connected with theirs: and no doubt the notion of a reward offered by Government for a true quadrature is a result of the reward offered for the longitude. Let it also be noted that this longitude reward was not a premium upon excogitation of a mysterious difficulty. The legislature was made to know that the rational hopes of the problem were centered in the improvement of the lunar tables and the improvement of chronometers. To these objects alone, and by name, the offer was directed: several persons gained rewards for both; and the offer was finally repealed.

AN INTERESTING HOAX.

Fundamentalis Figura Geometrica, primas tantum lineas circuli quadraturae possibilitatis ostendens. By Niels Erichsen (Nicolaus Ericius), s.h.i.+pbuilder, of Copenhagen. Copenhagen, 1755, 12mo.

This was a gift from my oldest friend who was not a relative, Dr. Samuel Maitland of the "Dark Ages."[358] He found it among his books, and could not imagine how he came by it: I could have told him. He once collected interpretations of the Apocalypse: and auction lots of such {164} books often contain quadratures. The wonder is he never found more than one.

The quadrature is not worth notice. Erichsen is the only squarer I have met with who has distinctly a.s.serted the particulars of that reward which has been so frequently thought to have been offered in England. He says that in 1747 the Royal Society on the 2d of June, offered to give a large reward for the quadrature of the circle and a true explanation of magnetism, in addition to 30,000 previously promised for the same. I need hardly say that the Royal Society had not 30,000 at that time, and would not, if it had had such a sum, have spent it on the circle, nor on magnetic theory; nor would it have coupled the two things. On this book, see _Notes and Queries_, 1st S., xii, 306. Perhaps Erichsen meant that the 30,000 had been promised by the Government, and the addition by the Royal Society.

October 8, 1866. I receive a letter from a cyclometer who understands that a reward is offered to any one who will square the circle, and that all compet.i.tors are to send their plans to me. The hoaxers have not yet failed out of the land.

TWO JESUIT CONTRIBUTIONS.

Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis redacta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium. Editio _Veneta_ prima. By Roger Joseph Boscovich. Venice, 1763, 4to.

The first edition is said to be of Vienna, 1758.[359] This is a celebrated work on the molecular theory of matter, grounded on the hypothesis of spheres of alternate attraction and repulsion. Boscovich was a Jesuit of varied pursuit. During his measurement of a degree of the meridian, while on horseback or waiting for his observations, he composed a Latin poem of about five thousand verses on eclipses, {165} with notes, which he dedicated to the Royal Society: _De Solis et Lunae defectibus_,[360] London, Millar and Dodsley, 1760, 4to.

Traite de paix entre Des Cartes et Newton, _precede_ des vies litteraires de ces deux chefs de la physique moderne.... By Aime Henri Paulian.[361] Avignon, 1763, 12mo.

I have had these books for many years without feeling the least desire to see how a lettered Jesuit would atone Descartes and Newton. On looking at my two volumes, I find that one contains nothing but the literary life of Descartes; the other nothing but the literary life of Newton. The preface indicates more: and Watt mentions _three_ volumes.[362] I dare say the first two contain all that is valuable. On looking more attentively at the two volumes, I find them both readable and instructive; the account of Newton is far above that of Voltaire, but not so popular. But he should not have said that Newton's family came from Newton in Ireland. Sir Rowland Hill gives fourteen _Newtons_ in Ireland;[363] twice the number of the cities that contended for the birth of Homer may now contend for the origin of Newton, on the word of Father Paulian.

Philosophical Essays, in three parts. By R. Lovett, Lay Clerk of the Cathedral Church of Worcester. Worcester, 1766, 8vo.

The Electrical Philosopher: containing a new system of physics {166} founded upon the principle of an universal Plenum of elementary fire.... By R. Lovett, Worcester, 1774, 8vo.

Mr. Lovett[364] was one of those ether philosophers who bring in elastic fluid as an explanation by imposition of words, without deducing any one phenomenon from what we know of it. And yet he says that attraction has received no support from geometry; though geometry, applied to a particular law of attraction, had shown how to predict the motions of the bodies of the solar system. He, and many of his stamp, have not the least idea of the confirmation of a theory by accordance of deduced results with observation posterior to the theory.

BAILLY'S EXAGGERATED VIEW OF ASTRONOMY.

Lettres sur l'Atlantide de Platon, et sur l'ancien Histoire de l'Asie, pour servir de suite aux lettres sur l'origine des Sciences, adressees a M. de Voltaire, par M. Bailly.[365] London and Paris, 1779, 8vo.

I might enter here all Bailly's histories of astronomy.[366] The paradox which runs through them all more or less, is the doctrine that astronomy is of immense antiquity, coming from some forgotten source, probably the drowned island of Plato, peopled by a race whom Bailly makes, as has {167} been said, to teach us everything except their existence and their name.

These books, the first scientific histories which belong to readable literature, made a great impression by power of style: Delambre created a strong reaction, of injurious amount, in favor of history founded on contemporary doc.u.ments, which early astronomy cannot furnish. These letters are addressed to Voltaire, and continue the discussion. There is one letter of Voltaire, being the fourth, dated Feb. 27, 1777, and signed "le vieux malade de Ferney, V. puer centum annorum."[367] Then begin Bailly's letters, from January 16 to May 12, 1778. From some ambiguous expressions in the Preface, it would seem that these are fict.i.tious letters, supposed to be addressed to Voltaire at their dates. Voltaire went to Paris February 10, 1778, and died there May 30. Nearly all this interval was his closing scene, and it is very unlikely that Bailly would have troubled him with these letters.[368]