A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume IIDe Morgan, Augustus
Philosophy
A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II
De Morgan, Augustus
Circle-squaring; Perpetual motion; Science -- Miscellanea; Trisection of angle
There is a trisection of which I have lost both cutting and reference: I
think it is in the _United Service Journal_. I could not detect any error
in it, though certain there must {15} be one. At least I discovered that
two parts of the diagram were incompatible unless a certain point lay in
line with two others, by which the angle to be trisected--and which was
trisected--was bound to be either 0 deg. or 180 deg..
Aug. 22, 1866. Mr. Upton sticks to his subject. He has just published "The
Uptonian Trisection. Respectfully dedicated to the schoolmasters of the
United Kingdom." It seems to be a new attempt. He takes no notice of the
sentence I have put in italics: nor does he mention my notice of him,
unless he means to include me among those by whom he has been "ridiculed
and sneered at" or "branded as a brainless heretic." I did neither one nor
the other: I thought Mr. Upton a paradoxer to whom it was likely to be
worth while to propound the definite assertion now in italics; and Mr.
Upton does not find it convenient to take issue on the point. He prefers
general assertions about algebra. So long as he cannot meet algebra on the
above question, he may issue as many "respectful challenges" to the
mathematicians as he can find paper to write: he will meet with no
attention.
There is one trisection which is of more importance than that of the angle.
It is easy to get half the paper on which you write for margin; or a
quarter; but very troublesome to get a third. Show us how, easily and
certainly, to fold the paper into three, and you will be a real benefactor
to society.
Early in the century there was a Turkish trisector of the angle, Hussein
Effendi, who published two methods. He was the father of Ameen Bey, who was
well known in England thirty years ago as a most amiable and cultivated
gentleman and an excellent mathematician. He was then a student at
Cambridge; and he died, years ago, in command of the army in Syria. Hussein
Effendi was instructed in mathematics by Ingliz Selim Effendi, who
translated a work {16} of Bonnycastle[37] into Turkish.[38] This Englishman
was Richard Baily, brother of Francis Baily[39] the astronomer, who
emigrated to Turkey in his youth, and adopted the manners of the Turks, but
whether their religion also I never heard, though I should suppose he did.
I now give the letters from the agricultural laborer and his friend,
described on page 12, Vol. I. They are curiosities; and the history of the
quadrature can never be well written without some specimens of this kind:
"Doctor Morgan, Sir. Permit me to address you
"Brute Creation may perhaps enjoy the faculty of beholding visible things
with a more penitrating eye than ourselves. But Spiritual objects are as
far out of their reach as though they had no being
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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