A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume IDe Morgan, Augustus
Philosophy
A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I
De Morgan, Augustus
Circle-squaring; Perpetual motion; Science -- Miscellanea; Trisection of angle
[24] Edward Cocker was born in 1631 and died between 1671 and 1677. His
famous arithmetic appeared in 1677 and went through many editions. It was
written in a style that appealed to teachers, and was so popular that the
expression "According to Cocker" became a household phrase. Early in the
nineteenth century there was a similar saying in America, "According to
Daboll," whose arithmetic had some points of analogy to that of Cocker.
Each had a well-known prototype in the ancient saying, "He reckons like
Nicomachus of Gerasa."
[25] So in the original, for Barreme. Francois Barreme was to France what
Cocker was to England. He was born at Lyons in 1640, and died at Paris in
1703. He published several arithmetics, dedicating them to his patron,
Colbert. One of the best known of his works is _L'arithmetique, ou le livre
facile pour apprendre l'arithmetique soi-meme_, 1677. The French word
_bareme_ or _barreme_, a ready-reckoner, is derived from his name.
[26] Born at Rome, about 480 A.D.; died at Pavia, 524. Gibbon speaks of him
as "the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for
their countryman." His works on arithmetic, music, and geometry were
classics in the medieval schools.
[27] Johannes Campanus, of Novarra, was chaplain to Pope Urban IV
(1261-1264). He was one of the early medieval translators of Euclid from
the Arabic into Latin, and the first printed edition of the _Elements_
(Venice, 1482) was from his translation. In this work he probably depended
not a little upon at least two or three earlier scholars. He also wrote _De
computo ecclesiastico Calendarium_, and _De quadratura circuli_.
[28] Archimedes gave 3-1/7, and 3-10/71 as the limits of the ratio of the
circumference to the diameter of a circle.
[29] Friedrich W. A. Murhard was born at Cassel in 1779 and died there in
1853. His _Bibliotheca Mathematica_, Leipsic, 1797-1805, is ill arranged
and inaccurate, but it is still a helpful bibliography. De Morgan speaks
somewhere of his indebtedness to it.
[30] Abraham Gotthelf Kaestner was born at Leipsic in 1719, and died at
Goettingen in 1800. He was professor of mathematics and physics at
Goettingen. His _Geschichte der Mathematik_ (1796-1800) was a work of
considerable merit. In the text of the _Budget of Paradoxes_ the name
appears throughout as Kastner instead of Kaestner.
[31] Lucas Gauricus, or Luca Gaurico, born at Giffoni, near Naples, in
1476; died at Rome in 1558. He was an astrologer and mathematician, and was
professor of mathematics at Ferrara in 1531. In 1545 he became bishop of
Civita Ducale.
[32] John Couch Adams was born at Lidcot, Cornwall, in 1819, and died in
1892. He and Leverrier predicted the discovery of Neptune from the
perturbations in Uranus.
[33] Urbain-Jean-Joseph Leverrier was born at Saint-Lo, Manche, in 1811,
and died at Paris in 1877. It was his data respecting the perturbations of
Uranus that were used by Adams and himself in locating Neptune.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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