10 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 



action against the French Academy of Sciences to recover 

 a reward to which he felt himself entitled. It ought to be 

 needless to say that there never was a reward offered 

 for the solution of this or any other of the problems which 

 are discussed in this volume. Upon this point De Mor- 

 gan has the following remarks : 



" Montucla says, speaking of France, that he finds three 

 notions prevalent among the cyclometers [or circle-squar- 

 ers]: i. That there is a large reward offered for success; 



2. That the longitude problem depends on that success; 



3. That the solution is the great end and object of geometry. 

 The same three notions are equally prevalent among the 

 same class in England. No reward has ever been offered 

 by the government of either country. The longitude 

 problem in no way depends upon perfect solution; existing 

 approximations are sufficient to a point of accuracy far 

 beyond what can be wanted. And geometry, content with 

 what exists, has long pressed on to other matters. Some- 

 times a cyclometer persuades a skipper, who has made land 

 in the wrong place, that the astronomers are in fault for 

 using a wrong measure of the circle ; and the skipper thinks 

 it a very comfortable solution! And this is the utmost 

 that the problem ever has to do with longitude." 



In the year 1775 the Royal Academy of Sciences of 

 Paris passed a resolution not to entertain communications 

 which claimed to give solutions of any of the following 

 problems : The duplication of the cube, the trisection of 

 an angle, the quadrature of a circle, or any machine an- 

 nounced as showing perpetual motion. And we have 

 heard that the Royal Society of London passed similar 

 resolutions, but of course in the case of neither society did 

 these resolutions exclude legitimate mathematical investi- 

 gations the famous computations of Mr. Shanks, to 

 which we shall have occasion to refer hereafter, were sub- 

 mitted to the Royal Society of London and published in 



