An introduction to mathematics, by A. N. Whitehead.

METHODS OF APPLICATION 33
pursued for its own sake. The use of the compass was not introduced into Europe till the
end of the twelfth century A.D., more than
3000 years after its first use in China. The
importance which the science ofelectromagnetism has since assumed in every department
of human life is not due to the superior practical bias of Europeans, but to the fact that
in the West electrical and magnetic phenomena were studied by men who were dominated by abstract theoretic interests.
The discovery of the electric current is due
to two Italians, Galvani in 1780, and Volta
in 1792. This great invention opened a new
series of phenomena for investigation. The
scientific world had now three separate,
though allied, groups of occurrences on hand
-the effects of "statical" electricity arising from frictional electrical machines, the
magnetic phenomena, and the effects due
to electric currents. From the end of the
eighteenth century onwards, these three lines
of investigation were quickly inter-connected
and the modern science of electromagnetism
was constructed, which now threatens to
transform human life.
Mathematical ideas now appear. During
the decade 1780 to 1789, Coulomb, a Frenchman, proved that magnetic poles attract or
repel each other, in proportion to the inverse
square of their distances, and also that the