A PLEA FOR ECONOMY OF THOUGHT AND 

 LABOUR IN THE MATHEMATICAL 

 SCIENCES BY THE STUDY OF THEIR 

 HISTORY 



By W. STOTT 



Honorary Statistician, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 



Never in the world's history has it been more necessary for 

 the British Empire to consider in what way it can economise 

 its material resources, and never has it been more necessary 

 for it also to consider how it can economise in the realms of 

 pure thought ; it is probable that no serious refutation will 

 be given to the statement that no nation has ever had a 

 greater number of scientific workers, of very great ability, and 

 in no nation have the results of their labours been so con- 

 sistently ignored. 



Were the discoverer alone the subject of neglect, this, 

 though discouraging to new workers, would not be so important, 

 but unfortunately it is the result of his labours that has 

 been neglected, and this is worse than a crime, it is a blunder. 



The consequence of this neglect is that numerous theorems 

 and processes in mathematics have been discovered, lost, 

 rediscovered, and again lost ; time after time has it been 

 necessary for new workers to go over the ground, of which 

 they could obtain no record that it had been previously 

 explored. Sometimes, years after the printing of a paper, 

 some unfortunate author has been overwhelmed by the dis- 

 covery that the work on which he had spent so much time 

 and thought had been previously given to the world ; it may 

 be that his own paper contained sufficient points of originality 

 to exonerate him entirely from any charge of plagiarism, but 

 there can be no compensation for the enormous loss of time 

 involved in rediscovering ancient theorems. 



As in war, so in science, the best progress is made by con- 

 solidating the positions already gained, and using them as a 



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