Page:Squaring the circle a history of the problem (IA squaringcirclehi00hobsuoft).djvu/16

 The three celebrated problems of the quadrature of the circle, the trisection of an angle, and the duplication of the cube, although all of them are somewhat special in character, have one great advantage for the purposes of historical study, viz. that their complete history as scientific problems lies, in a completed form, before us. Taking the first of these problems, which will be here our special subject of study, we possess indications of its origin in remote antiquity, we are able to follow the lines on which the treatment of the problem proceeded and changed from age to age in accordance with the progressive development of general Mathematical Science, on which it exercised a noticeable reaction. We are also able to see how the progress of endeavours towards a solution was affected by the intervention of some of the greatest Mathematical thinkers that the world has seen, such men as Archimedes, Huyghens, Euler, and Hermite. Lastly, we know when and how the resources of modern Mathematical Science became sufficiently powerful to make possible that resolution of the problem which, although negative, in that the impossibility of the problem subject to the implied restrictions was proved, is far from being a mere negation, in that the true grounds of the impossibility have been set forth with a finality and completeness which is somewhat rare in the history of Science.

If the question be raised, why such an apparently special problem, as that of the quadrature of the circle, is deserving of the sustained interest which has attached to it, and which it still possesses, the answer is only to be found in a scrutiny of the history of the problem, and especially in the closeness of the connection of that history with the general history of Mathematical Science. It would be difficult to select another special problem, an account of the history of which would afford so good an opportunity of obtaining a glimpse of so many of the main phases of the development of general Mathematics; and it is for that reason, even more than on account of the intrinsic interest of the problem, that I have selected it as appropriate for treatment in a short course of lectures.

Apart from, and alongside of, the scientific history of the problem, it has a history of another kind, due to the fact that, at all times, and almost as much at the present time as formerly, it has attracted the attention of a class of persons who have, usually with a very inadequate equipment of knowledge of the true nature of the problem or of its history, devoted their attention to it, often with passionate enthusiasm. Such persons have very frequently maintained, in the face of all efforts