A Budget of Paradoxes Volume I From Augustus de Morgan

Reproduction of the original: A Budget of Paradoxes by Augustus de Morgan

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ... THE EDITORIAL SYSTEM. "sir, --I have reason to think that many persons have a very inaccurate notion of the Editorial System. What I call by this name lu.s grown up in the last centenary--a word I may use to signify the hundred years now ending, and to avoid the ambiguity of century. It cannot conveniently be explained by editors themselves, and edited journals generally do not like to say much about it. In your paper perhaps, in which editorial duties differ somewhat from those of ordinary journals, the common system may be freely spoken of. "When a reviewed author, as very often happens, writes to the editor of the reviewing journal to complain of what has been said of him, he frequently--even more often than not--complains of 'your reviewer.' He sometimes presumes that 'you' have, 'through inadvertence' in this instance, 'allowed some incompetent person to lower the character of your usually accurate pages.' Sometimes he talks of 'your scribe, ' and, in extreme cases, even of 'your hack.' All this shows perfect ignorance of the journal system, except where it is done under the notion of letting the editor down easy. But the editor never accepts the mercy. "All that is in a journal, except what is marked as from a correspondent, either by the editor himself or by the correspondent's real or fictitious signature, is published entirely on editorial responsibility, as much as if the editor had written it himself. The editor, therefore, may claim, and does" claim and exercise, unlimited right of omission, addition, and alteration. This is so well understood that the editor performs his last function on the last revise without the 'contributor' knowing what is done. The word contributor is the proper one; it implies that he furnishes...

A Budget of Paradoxes, originally published in 1915, is mathematician Augustus De Morgan's most accessible and entertaining work. Well-known for his wit, De Morgan takes aim at those people he calls "paradoxers," which in modern terms would most closely resemble crackpots. Paradoxers, however, are not crazy, necessarily-rather, they hold views wildly outside the accepted sphere. If you believed the world was round when everyone else knew that it was flat, you would be a paradoxer. In this book, De Morgan reviews a number of books from his own library written by such "crackpots" who claim to have solved a great many of the puzzles of mathematics and science, including squaring a circle, creating perpetual motion, and overcoming gravity. Each is thoroughly put in his place in ways both entertaining and informative to readers. Skeptics, students of science, and anyone who likes pondering a puzzle will find this book a delightful read. British mathematician AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN (1806-1871) invented the term mathematical induction. Among his many published works is Trigonometry and Double Algebra (1849).

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