"
"'_Il-y-a ? parier_,'" replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, "'_que
toute id?©e publique, toute convention re?§ue, est une sottise, car elle
a convenue au plus grand nombre_.' The mathematicians, I grant you,
have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you
allude, and which is none the less an error for its promulgation as
truth. With an art worthy a better cause, for example, they have
insinuated the term 'analysis' into application to algebra. The French
are the originators of this particular deception ; but if a term is of
any importance--if words derive any value from applicability--then
'analysis' conveys 'algebra,' about as much as, in Latin, '_ambitus_'
implies 'ambition,' '_religio_,' 'religion,' or '_homines honesti_,'a
set of honorable men."
"You have a quarrel on hand, I see," said I, "with some of the
algebraists of Paris; but proceed."
"I dispute the availability, and thus the value, of that reason which
is cultivated in any especial form other than the abstractly
logical. I dispute, in particular, the reason educed by mathematical
study. The mathematics are the science of form and quantity;
mathematical reasoning is merely logic applied to observation upon
form and quantity. The great error lies in supposing that even the
truths of what is called _pure_ algebra are abstract or general
truths.
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