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Updated: April 30, 2025
The fame of Newton has proved to many paradoxists an irresistible attraction; it has been to these unfortunates as the candle to the fluttering moth. Circle-squaring, as we shall presently see, has had its attractions, nor have earth-fixing and earth-flattening been neglected; but attacking the law of gravitation has been the favourite work of paradoxists.
Yet we still hear from time to time of the attempted publication of hoaxes of greater or less ingenuity. There would seem to be some charm about our satellite for the minds of paradoxists and hoaxers generally. Nor are these tricks invariably detected at once by the general public, or even by persons of some culture.
It may be questioned whether half the strange notions into which paradoxists fall must not be ascribed to the vagueness of too many of our scientific treatises. A half-understood explanation, or a carelessly worded account of some natural phenomenon, leads the paradoxist, whose nature is compounded of conceit and simplicity, to originate a theory of his own on the subject.
A favourite subject of paradoxical ideas has been the moon's motion of rotation. Strangely enough, De Morgan, who knew more about past paradoxists than any man of his time, seems not to have heard of the dispute between Keill and Bentley over this matter in 1690.
I have had a somewhat wide experience of paradoxists, and have noted the experience of De Morgan and others who, like him, have tried to convince them of their folly. The conclusion at which I have arrived is, that to make a rope of sand were an easy task compared with the attempt to instil the simpler facts of science into paradoxical heads.
He had not been wholly unprepared for it, in fact; and, as he had a purpose in dealing with the paradoxists, he was satisfied to continue that quiet analysis of their work which so roused their indignation. He found in them a curious subject of study; and he found an equally curious subject of study in their disciples.
Indeed, these last he treated, as they deserved, with a scathing satire quite different from his humorous and not ungenial comments on the wonderful theories of the honest paradoxists. There is one special use to which the study of paradox-literature may be applied, which so far as I know has not hitherto been much attended to.
The simpler not to say more foolish paradoxists, whose wonderful discoveries are merely amazing misapprehensions, were even more interesting to De Morgan than the craftier sort who make a living, or try to make a living, out of their pretended theories.
The simple statement that the outer planets move more slowly than the inner, and so require a smaller force to keep them in their course, would have sufficed, not, perhaps, altogether to remove the difficulty, but to show the beginner where the explanation was to be looked for. It was in connection with this subject of gravitation that one of the most well-meaning of the paradoxists the late Mr.
He treated these works in a quaint fashion: not unkindly, for his was a kindly nature; not even earnestly, though he was thoroughly in earnest; yet in such sort as to rouse the indignation of the unfortunate paradoxists. He was abused roundly for what he said, but much more roundly when he declined further controversy.
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