Senior Oration of James
Kelly for the Dialectic Society, March 10, 1860: "Is
the Study of Mathematics Injurious to the Mind?"
Senior Oration
delivered
in
Dialectic Hall
March the
10th. A.D. 1860
by
James Kelly.
Is the Study of Mathematics injurious to the mind?
I suppose no science ever met with so great opposition as mathematics and that
from so many different sources. The philosopher and the fool, the skeptic and
the credulous, the divine and the infidel have all united in pronouncing one
eternal anathema upon the study of mathematics; yet like other truths, it still
survives and will survive.
Sir William Hamilton, having
marsheld all the enemies who ever drew a sword against mathematics and indeed
presented a formidable front on the metaphysical battlefield, made a desperate
charge upon the enemy and attempted to drive it from the strong holds which it
occupied in the universities and colleges throughout the educated world. It bore
the shock without a fluctuation, maintained its ground, maintains it still and
will ever maintain it so long as men distinguish
between truth and falsehood.
Hamilton might have collected
all the denunciations, witticisms, and sarcasms ever uttered against
mathematics, and have arranged them with logical precision, and yet with all his
metaphysical skill, he would have succeeded but badly in convincing either the
intelligent or the ignorant that the study of mathematics is injurious to the
mind while such men as Newton, Franklin, and a host of others drank their
most invigorating draughts from its deepest waters. Indeed these were shining
lights placed upon hill tops which could not be hid.
I do not attempt to show that mathematics is the best study to discipline the
mind, that preeminence I do not know that we are able to assign to any
particular study. My purpose alone is to show that it is not injurious. The
design of an education is to discipline and develop the intellectual faculties
and thus enable us to reason correctly. and reasoning is the ascertaining of
truth. Now the primary branches of mathematics, have well been called, the
science of precision; for in them we deal with facts we deal with truths. And
how it can be, that the investigation of truth, the familiarizing ourselves with
truth the relations between truth and truth, are
inj
to our reasoning faculties, while the design of
reasoning is the ascertaining of truth, I must confess I am not able to see. Yet
this is urged against the study of mathematics. It is said that in it, we deal
with facts, while in the world we are surrounded by contingencies, and have to
reason about probabilities, and being conversant only with facts we are not
qualified for the real condition of things in life. Were it a fact that in
mathematics we dealt only with facts, I doubt very much that the conclusion is
true (viz) that we are thereby disqualified for reasoning about probabilities.
But the urgers of this objection forget, that in the higher mathematics,
calculus and the other branches based upon its principles, we reason about
probabilities. This part of the science is not called the science of precision
but of approximation.
Again it is urged against the study of mathematics that men of ordinary ability
can make great proficiency in it. Perhaps they can, but before any man can make
efficient progress in the study of mathematics he must have acquired the power
of concentrating his mind, shutting himself out it
were from the external world and centering his
upon the object under investigation. But the
power of concentrating the mind is admitted by all to be one of the highest
characteristics of a well disciplined mind, therefore the study by which this
power is acquired and that too by men of ordinary ability, must not only not be
injurious to the mind but must be considered one of the best disciplines for the
mind.
Were I able to enter into a metaphysical discussion of this subject I would not
be disposed to do so; for we have external arguments equally conclusive and far
more intelligible. We are created with a desire for happiness. We are surrounded
by thousands of objects which may be converted to our happiness, we reasonably
conclude and all admit that it is our duty to promote our own and others
happiness. We have a mind it is also our duty to improve it. Now if the
acquiring of that knowledge by means of which we are enabled to increase our
happiness be injurious to our minds, the plans of God in respect to us will conflict with each
other which is derogatory to His infinite wisdom and therefore cannot be. No
science nor art has conduced so much to the happiness of the human race as
mathematics. We cannot conceive how utterly destitute we would be without
mathematical knowledge, for there would be no machinery without mathematics and
no clothes without machinery, there be but little
food without grinding and no grindin
out machinery. But under the benign influence of
the mathematician machineries are invented, factories are constructed, and all
our wants are supplied. The expansive ocean is no longer a barrier to the
friendly intercourse of distant nations, but the mathematician directs the ship
over the billowy deep and steers it safely to the harbor prepared according to
his own planing. Commerce follows navigation, then cities spring up and the
means of enjoyment are placed in the reach of thousands. The mathematician turns
his course inland, before him as he travels, valleys rise Hills and mountains
fall or open a passage to him through their hearts, and an iron track marks his
stately steppings. When his journey is completed, he turns and strikes his wand
to the ground then rushes forth the iron horse always panting but never tiring;
as he runs he scatters, on each side of his path, the rich products of distant
nations. At the command of the mathematician the winding river becomes straight
and its rugged banks and broken bottom become smooth and form an easy path for a
kindred offspring of his magic wand. Is this all he has done? The harmless cloud
above our heads reply "he has stolen my thunder and converted it into
the message bird in whose wing is the speed of ." The earth beneath our feet echos the sound has aided the geologist in descending into my
inner- most recesses and robbing me of my
richest treasures. These are some of the benefits which flow from mathematical
knowledge. Yet if the ungrateful enemies of mathematics will not acknowledge
their benefactors, let them not dare to charge God with the folly or the inconsistency of giving us
such a strong desire for the enjoyment of the objects in our reach, and a
conscience approving a proper gratification of this desire, and then a mind
which will be injured by acquiring the knowledge by means of which we can
convert these objects to our enjoyment.
There is also implanted within our breasts a desire for knowledge for sake of
knowledge itself. The gratification of this desire is esteemed laudable. We are
surrounded by the works of an All Wise Creator, myriads of worlds are in our
vision, some are fixed and others have a relative motion with respect to each
other and with respect to our own planet. We desire to know the laws which
regulate these motions, and no higher mental attainment can be well conceived
of, than by understanding the laws by which the works of an all wise Creator are
verned and forming some conception of Him through
works, comprehending somewhat the vastness of His plans, the inexhaustibleness of His
resources, the unlimitedness of His power, and the infinitedness of His wisdom.
Nothing could be more absurd than to think such knowledge injurious to the mind.
But such knowledge is only obtained by mathematical investigation. It was the
mathematician who discovered the nothing upon which the vast universe is
suspended. And he with untiring step and some rudeness too I must confess,
pursued the moon in her revolutions, until she reluctantly confessed that the
mild beams she so profusely lavished upon us were not her own but all borrowed
from the sun. Then buoyant with success he stared the sun in his face until he
blushing exposed a confused and spotted countenance. With his ordinates and
coordinates he steps form one fixed star to another and measures the distance
between. He tells us when and where the sun will withhold his light and, the
moon vail her face in darkness, and planets refuse to contribute their mites.
With an iron grasp he catches the wild comet by his fiery tail and will not let
him go until he tells him when he will be round again. At his gaze the nebulae
which appear as vapor to others, are increased to fixed stars other nebulae appear in the far distant, which tell
much yet remains to be done before the end of
space can be seen by a mathematician.