THE HUMOUR OF MATHEMATICIANS
Brahmagupta's problem[96] appears to be the earliest instance of a kind
of joke which has been much used by mathematicians. For the sake of
giving a certain picturesqueness to the data of problems, and so to
excite that sort of interest which is partly expressed by a smile,
mathematicians have got into the habit of talking, for example, of
monkeys in the form of geometrical points climbing up massless ropes.
Professor P. Staeckel[97] truly remarked that physiological
mechanics--the mechanics of bones, muscles, and so on--is wholly
different from this. There was once a lecturer on mathematics at
Cambridge who used yearly to propound to his pupils a problem in rigid
dynamics which related to the motion of a garden roller supposed to be
without mass or friction, when a heavy and perfectly rough insect walked
round the interior of it in the direction of normal rolling.
Hitherto this has been the only mathematical outlet for the humour of
mathematicians; and those who really had the interests of mathematics at
heart saw with alarm the growing tendency towards scholasticism in
mathematical jokes. Fortunately the discovery of logic by some
mathematicians has removed this danger. Still to many mathematicians
logic is still unknown, and to them--to Professor A. Schoenflies for
example--modern mathematics, owing to its alliance with logic, appears
to be sinking into scholasticism. It is true that the word
"scholasticism" is not used by Professor Schoenflies in any
intentionally precise signification, but merely as a vague epithet of
disapproval, as the word "socialism" is used by the ordinary philistine,
and this would certainly serve as a sufficient excuse. But no excuse is
needed: these opinions are themselves a source of mathematical jokes.
FOOTNOTES:
[96] See Chapter XII.
[97] _Encykl. der math. Wiss._, vol. iv., part i., p. 474.