Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
History
Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
An attentive consideration of these questions in all their bearings has
produced in the mind of the writer a full conviction that we must look to
other sources for the revival of the study of the ancient geometry than
either the writings of Stewart or Simson. It has been well observed by the
most eminent geometer of our own times, Professor Davies--whose signature
of PEN-AND-INK (Vol. ii., p. 8.) affords but a flimsy disguise for his
well-known _propria persona_--that "it was a great mistake for these
authors to have written their principal works in the Latin language, as it
has done more than anything else to prevent their study among the only
geometers of the eighteenth century who were competent to understand and
value them;" and it is no less singular than true, as the same writer
elsewhere observes, "that whilst Dr. Stewart's writings were of a kind
calculated to render them peculiarly attractive to the non-academic school
of English geometers, they remain to this day less generally known than the
writings of any geometer of these kingdoms." The same remarks, in a
slightly qualified form, may be applied to most of the writings of Simson;
for although his edition of Euclid is now the almost universally adopted
text-book of geometry in England, at the time of its first appearance in
1756 it did not differ so much from existing translations as to attract
particular attention by the novelty of its contents. Moreover, at this time
the impulse had already been given and was silently exerting its influence
upon a class of students of whose existence Dr. Simson appears to have been
completely ignorant. In one of his letters to Nourse (_Phil. Mag._, Sept.
1848, p. 204.) he regrets that "the taste for the ancient geometry, or
indeed any geometry, seems to be quite worn out;" but had he instituted an
examination of those contemporary periodicals either wholly or partially
devoted to mathematics, he would have been furnished with ample reasons for
entertaining a different opinion.
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