Mathematical philosophy, a study of fate and freedom; lectures for educated laymen, by Cassius J. Keyser.

14 MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY
iarity with the phenomenon, it is sometimes a bit hard to
avoid astonishment and even a loss of patience. Not
long ago a high-placed counselor of a well-known college
of liberal arts challenged me, with defiant confidence and
unfeigned solemnity, to give any good reason why college
students should be required to pursue a course in algebra
rather than one in some practical art, say the art of cooking mutton chops. On receiving such a challenge from
a grown man, what should a grown man do? Confess
his astonishment? Betray an exhaustion of patience?
Fly to the easy refuge of ridicule? Any such reaction
would probably have been misunderstood. In dealing
with a solemn question, no matter how stupid, it is usually
the wiser course to treat it with respect if possible. I
might have responded, in the fine words of Professor
Whitehead,' that
"Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has
been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.... Through and through the
world is infected with quantity. To talk sense, is to
talk in quantities. It is no use saying that the nation
is large,-How large? It is no use saying that radium
is scarce,-How scarce? You can not evade quantity.
You may fly to poetry and to music, and quantity and
number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
Elegant intellects which despise the theory of quantity
are but half developed. They are more to be pitied
than blamed."
It did not seem to me, however, that one capable of
issuing such a challenge as that to which I have alluded
1A. N. Whitehead; The Organization of Thought. Cambridge University Press,