Let us pass in review the various special sciences which combined make
mathematics; let us see what each has accomplished, whither it tends and
what we may hope from it. If the preceding views are correct, we should
see that the greatest advances in the past have happened when two of
these sciences have united, when we have become conscious of the
similarity of their form, despite the difference of their matter, when
they have so modeled themselves upon each other that each could profit
by the other's conquests. We should at the same time foresee in
combinations of the same sort the progress of the future.
ARITHMETIC
Progress in arithmetic has been much slower than in algebra and
analysis, and it is easy to see why. The feeling of continuity is a
precious guide which the arithmetician lacks; each whole number is
separated from the others--it has, so to speak, its own individuality.
Each of them is a sort of exception and this is why general theorems are
rarer in the theory of numbers; this is also why those which exist are
more hidden and longer elude the searchers.
If arithmetic is behind algebra and analysis, the best thing for it to
do is to seek to model itself upon these sciences so as to profit by
their advance. The arithmetician ought therefore to take as guide the
analogies with algebra. These analogies are numerous and if, in many
cases, they have not yet been studied sufficiently closely to become
utilizable, they at least have long been foreseen, and even the language
of the two sciences shows they have been recognized. Thus we speak of
transcendent numbers and thus we account for the future classification
of these numbers already having as model the classification of
transcendent functions, and still we do not as yet very well see how to
pass from one classification to the other; but had it been seen, it
would already have been accomplished and would no longer be the work of
the future.
The first example that comes to my mind is the theory of congruences,
where is found a perfect parallelism to the theory of algebraic
equations. Surely we shall succeed in completing this parallelism, which
must hold for instance between the theory of algebraic curves and that
of congruences with two variables. And when the problems relative to
congruences with several variables shall be solved, this will be a first
step toward the solution of many questions of indeterminate analysis.
ALGEBRA
The theory of algebraic equations will still long hold the attention of
geometers; numerous and very different are the sides whence it may be
attacked.
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