Page:Scientific Papers of Josiah Willard Gibbs.djvu/28

xx Grassmann, the vector product satisfying the combinatorial law, but yielding a vector instead of a magnitude of the second order. While these departures from the systems mentioned testify to the great ingenuity and originality of the author, and do not impair the utility of the system as a tool for the use of students of physics, they nevertheless expose the discipline to the criticism of the pure algebraist. Such objection falls to the ground, however, in the case of the theory mentioned, for dyadics yield, for n=3, a linear associative algebra of nine units, namely nonions, the general nonion satisfying an identical equation of the third degree, the Hamilton-Cayley equation.

It is easy to make clear the precise point of view adopted by Professor Gibbs in this matter. This is well expounded in his vice-presidential address on multiple algebra, before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1886, and also in his warm defense of Grassmann's priority rights, as against Hamilton's, in his article in Nature "Quaternions and the Ausdehnungslehre." He points out that the key to matricular algebras is to be found in the open (or indeterminate) product (i.e., a product in which no equations subsist between the factors), and, after calling attention to the brief development of this product in Grassmann's work of 1844, affirms that Sylvester's assignment of the date 1858 to the "second birth of Algebra" (this being the year of Cayley's Memoir on Matrices) must be changed to 1844. Grassmann, however, ascribes very little importance to the open product, regarding it as offering no useful applications. On the contrary, Professor Gibbs assigns to it the first place in the three kinds of multiplication considered in the Ausdehnungslehre, since from it may be derived the algebraic and the combinatorial products, and shows in fact that both of them may be expressed in terms of indeterminate products. Thus the multiplication rejected by Grassmann becomes, from the standpoints of Professor Gibbs, the key to all others. The originality of the latter's treatment of the algebra of dyadics, as contrasted with the methods of other authors in the allied theory of matrices, consists exactly in this, that Professor Gibbs regards a matrix of order n as a multiple quantity in n2 units, each of which is an indeterminate product of two factors. On the other hand, C. S. Peirce, who was the first to recognize (1870) the quadrate linear associative algebras identical with matrices, uses for the units a letter pair, but does not regard this combination as a product. In addition, Professor Gibbs, following the spirit of Grassmann's system, as do Hamilton and Peirce, but considers two sorts, both originating with Grassmann. Thus it may be said that quadrate, or matricular algebras, are brought entirely within the wonderful system expounded by Grassmann in 1844.