The great thing about Todhunter is that his arguments, against lab demonstrations, actually make a lot of sense and throw light on the Victorian intellectual framework --- his argument is that only the first time you do an experiment, on something you do not have an answer for-- only then, with that joy of the new, is there real learning, and really, he's got a good point. We do not know, how many of his readers or listeners understood his point. If the question is learning something, you have to have that new, it has to happen to the person themselve, and not just be something you imitate.
q-CLA
Isaac Todhunter (November 23, 1820 to March 1, 1884) was a Victorian mathematician and historian of mathematics, at Cambridge. He wrote many math textbooks, with titles like A History of the Mathematical Theories of Attraction and the Figure of the Earth from the Time of Newton to That of Laplace (1873).
Some lesser known facts about Todhunter, recounted in an old book.(which included a lecture on Todhunter delivered April 13, 1904.) are described below:
At the University of Cambridge there is a foundation which provides for what is called the Burney prize. According to the regulations the prize is to be awarded to a graduate of the University who is not of more than three years’ standing from admission to his degree and who shall produce the best English essay “On some moral or metaphysical subject, or on the existence, nature and attributes of God, or on the truth and evidence of the Christian religion.” Todhunter in the course of his first postgraduate year submitted an essay on the thesis that “The doctrine of a divine providence is inseparable from the belief in the existence of an absolutely perfect Creator.” This essay received the prize, and was printed in 1849.
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What are the odds that the author of A History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability(1865) was fond of cats. He was. We quote his student Leslie Stephen (father of Virginia Woolf and quoted in Noel Annan's Leslie Stephen (1984)) that Isaac Todhunter was:
...a character; quaint, crotchety, sour , uncouth, surrounded by cats and canaries, ...[who] worked with true mathematical precision....
We suspect this observation was more accurate before Todhunter married in 1864 the daughter of an admiral.
q-CLA
Isaac Todhunter (November 23, 1820 to March 1, 1884) was a Victorian mathematician and historian of mathematics, at Cambridge. He wrote many math textbooks, with titles like A History of the Mathematical Theories of Attraction and the Figure of the Earth from the Time of Newton to That of Laplace (1873).
Some lesser known facts about Todhunter, recounted in an old book.(which included a lecture on Todhunter delivered April 13, 1904.) are described below:
At the University of Cambridge there is a foundation which provides for what is called the Burney prize. According to the regulations the prize is to be awarded to a graduate of the University who is not of more than three years’ standing from admission to his degree and who shall produce the best English essay “On some moral or metaphysical subject, or on the existence, nature and attributes of God, or on the truth and evidence of the Christian religion.” Todhunter in the course of his first postgraduate year submitted an essay on the thesis that “The doctrine of a divine providence is inseparable from the belief in the existence of an absolutely perfect Creator.” This essay received the prize, and was printed in 1849.
...
He was an excellent linguist; besides being a sound Latin and Greek scholar, he was familiar with French, German, Spanish, Italian and also Russian, Hebrew and Sanskrit. He was likewise well versed in philosophy, and for the two years 1863-5 acted as an Examiner for the Moral Science Tripos, of which the chief founders were himself and Whewell.
....
[another prize Todhunter won in 1869 was that]... members of St. John’s College founded... in honor of their distinguished fellow, J. C. Adams. It is awarded every two years, and is in value about £225. In 1869 the subject proposed was “A determination of the circumstances under which Discontinuity of any kind presents itself in the solution of a problem of maximum or minimum in the Calculus of Variations.”
He considered that the Experimental Sciences [wherein an instructor reconstructs historic experiments in front of the class, a hot topic mid 1860s] were little suitable, and that for a very English reason, because they could not be examined on adequately. He says:
“Experimental Science viewed in connection with education, rejoices in a name which is unfairly expressive. A real experiment is a very valuable product of the mind, requiring great knowledge to invent it and great ingenuity to carry it out. When Perrier ascended the Puy de Dome with a barometer in order to test the influence of change of level on the height of the column of mercury, he performed an experiment, the suggestion of which was worthy of the genius of Pascal and Descartes. But when a modern traveller ascends Mont Blanc, and directs one of his guides to carry a barometer, he cannot be said to perform an experiment in any very exact or very meritorious sense of the word. It is a repetition of an observation made thousands of times before, and we can never recover any of the interest which belonged to the first trial, unless indeed, without having ever heard of it, we succeeded in reconstructing the process of ourselves. In fact, almost always he who first plucks an experimental flower thus appropriates and destroys its fragrance and its beauty.”
[And also Todhunter recalled demonstrations, like that of Foucault's pendulum, when]....Some considerable drawback must be made from the educational value of experiments, so called, on account of their failure. Many persons must have been present at the exhibitions of skilled performers, and have witnessed an uninterrupted series of ignominious reverses...
[Summing up]..... If ...[the student] does not believe the statements of his tutor—probably a clergyman of mature knowledge, recognized ability and blameless character—his suspicion is irrational, and manifests a want of the power of appreciating evidence, a want fatal to his success in that branch of science which he is supposed to be cultivating.”
.....
In 1874 Todhunter was elected an honorary fellow of his college, an honor which he prized very highly. Later on he was chosen as an elector to three of the University professorships—Moral Philosophy, Astronomy, Mental Philosophy and Logic.
[another prize Todhunter won in 1869 was that]... members of St. John’s College founded... in honor of their distinguished fellow, J. C. Adams. It is awarded every two years, and is in value about £225. In 1869 the subject proposed was “A determination of the circumstances under which Discontinuity of any kind presents itself in the solution of a problem of maximum or minimum in the Calculus of Variations.”
He considered that the Experimental Sciences [wherein an instructor reconstructs historic experiments in front of the class, a hot topic mid 1860s] were little suitable, and that for a very English reason, because they could not be examined on adequately. He says:
“Experimental Science viewed in connection with education, rejoices in a name which is unfairly expressive. A real experiment is a very valuable product of the mind, requiring great knowledge to invent it and great ingenuity to carry it out. When Perrier ascended the Puy de Dome with a barometer in order to test the influence of change of level on the height of the column of mercury, he performed an experiment, the suggestion of which was worthy of the genius of Pascal and Descartes. But when a modern traveller ascends Mont Blanc, and directs one of his guides to carry a barometer, he cannot be said to perform an experiment in any very exact or very meritorious sense of the word. It is a repetition of an observation made thousands of times before, and we can never recover any of the interest which belonged to the first trial, unless indeed, without having ever heard of it, we succeeded in reconstructing the process of ourselves. In fact, almost always he who first plucks an experimental flower thus appropriates and destroys its fragrance and its beauty.”
[And also Todhunter recalled demonstrations, like that of Foucault's pendulum, when]....Some considerable drawback must be made from the educational value of experiments, so called, on account of their failure. Many persons must have been present at the exhibitions of skilled performers, and have witnessed an uninterrupted series of ignominious reverses...
[Summing up]..... If ...[the student] does not believe the statements of his tutor—probably a clergyman of mature knowledge, recognized ability and blameless character—his suspicion is irrational, and manifests a want of the power of appreciating evidence, a want fatal to his success in that branch of science which he is supposed to be cultivating.”
.....
In 1874 Todhunter was elected an honorary fellow of his college, an honor which he prized very highly. Later on he was chosen as an elector to three of the University professorships—Moral Philosophy, Astronomy, Mental Philosophy and Logic.
Here is our subject-
What are the odds that the author of A History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability(1865) was fond of cats. He was. We quote his student Leslie Stephen (father of Virginia Woolf and quoted in Noel Annan's Leslie Stephen (1984)) that Isaac Todhunter was:
...a character; quaint, crotchety, sour , uncouth, surrounded by cats and canaries, ...[who] worked with true mathematical precision....
We suspect this observation was more accurate before Todhunter married in 1864 the daughter of an admiral.
eq
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