94
II - Convergence: Discrete variables
capable of "harming the image of French science". As if that depended on
the work of only one man, and as if "American science" was discredited when
a biologist made up his mice in black and white to prove his theory correct!
On this topic let us cite the opinion of Robert Hutchins 23 in 1963:
There have been very few scientific frauds. This is because a scientist would
be a fool to commit a scientific fraud when he can commit frauds every
day on his wife, his associates, the president of the university, and the
grocer ... A scientist has a limited education. He labours on the topic of
his dissertation, wins the Nobel Prize by the time he is 35, and suddenly
has nothing to do ... He has no alternative but to spend the rest of his
life making a nuisance of himself.
The author of this declaration has clearly let himself be led by his taste
for paradox; one should however note that he presided over the University of
Chicago before, during and after the war and so has had some observations
to deliver ...
And Euler? His Complete Works - more precisely, those that he prepared
himself with a view to possible publication -, in course of being edited in
Germany, and then in Switzerland since 1911, must comprise about 80 volumes in quarto, of which 29 are on mathematics not to speak of mechanics,
of hydraulics, of astronomy, of mathematical physics, of optics, of shipbuilding theory and navigation, of geodesy, of artillery, of financial mathematics
and of the widely circulated Lettres a une princesse d'Allemagne sur divers
sujets de physique et de philosophie, intended for the education of a niece
of Frederick n24. He would have done better to confide this heavy task to
people such as Diderot, d'Alembert or Voltaire who inspired him with considerably more sympathy than Euler and his Calvinism (his father was a pastor
in Bale 25 , and it was mathematics which without changing his ideas eventually dissuaded the young Euler from following him). There is also, as well
as these 80 volumes, an enormous correspondence of which the essential part
remains to be published. He lost an eye in 1738 and was blind from 1771, but
continued to work to the same rhythm.
Euler did not publish all that he wrote, far from it, (560 books and articles
during his life, but there about 300 others), principally because he wrote
23 Cited in Daniel S. Greenberg, The Politics of American Science (Penguin Books,
1969, original American title: The Politics of Pure Science, American Library,
1967). Greenberg collaborated in the great journal Science, which he had to leave
because of his disrespectful points of view. His book is still worth reading.
24 "The King calls me 'my professor', and and I am the happiest of men" (Hairer
and Wanner, p. 159). However this did not stay so for very long, Frederick II
appreciating much more his capabilities as administrator of the Berlin Academy
than his "useless" mathematics.
25 In the XVII th and XVIII th centuries, and even more in the XIX th , many scientists
and more generally intellectuals were, in the protestant countries, sons of pastors,
no doubt because these were educated people. The corresponding phenomenon is
found more rarely in the catholic countries, but since the instruction there was
almost totally monopolised by the religious schools, the results were not very
different until the Revolution.
II - Convergence: Discrete variables
capable of "harming the image of French science". As if that depended on
the work of only one man, and as if "American science" was discredited when
a biologist made up his mice in black and white to prove his theory correct!
On this topic let us cite the opinion of Robert Hutchins 23 in 1963:
There have been very few scientific frauds. This is because a scientist would
be a fool to commit a scientific fraud when he can commit frauds every
day on his wife, his associates, the president of the university, and the
grocer ... A scientist has a limited education. He labours on the topic of
his dissertation, wins the Nobel Prize by the time he is 35, and suddenly
has nothing to do ... He has no alternative but to spend the rest of his
life making a nuisance of himself.
The author of this declaration has clearly let himself be led by his taste
for paradox; one should however note that he presided over the University of
Chicago before, during and after the war and so has had some observations
to deliver ...
And Euler? His Complete Works - more precisely, those that he prepared
himself with a view to possible publication -, in course of being edited in
Germany, and then in Switzerland since 1911, must comprise about 80 volumes in quarto, of which 29 are on mathematics not to speak of mechanics,
of hydraulics, of astronomy, of mathematical physics, of optics, of shipbuilding theory and navigation, of geodesy, of artillery, of financial mathematics
and of the widely circulated Lettres a une princesse d'Allemagne sur divers
sujets de physique et de philosophie, intended for the education of a niece
of Frederick n24. He would have done better to confide this heavy task to
people such as Diderot, d'Alembert or Voltaire who inspired him with considerably more sympathy than Euler and his Calvinism (his father was a pastor
in Bale 25 , and it was mathematics which without changing his ideas eventually dissuaded the young Euler from following him). There is also, as well
as these 80 volumes, an enormous correspondence of which the essential part
remains to be published. He lost an eye in 1738 and was blind from 1771, but
continued to work to the same rhythm.
Euler did not publish all that he wrote, far from it, (560 books and articles
during his life, but there about 300 others), principally because he wrote
23 Cited in Daniel S. Greenberg, The Politics of American Science (Penguin Books,
1969, original American title: The Politics of Pure Science, American Library,
1967). Greenberg collaborated in the great journal Science, which he had to leave
because of his disrespectful points of view. His book is still worth reading.
24 "The King calls me 'my professor', and and I am the happiest of men" (Hairer
and Wanner, p. 159). However this did not stay so for very long, Frederick II
appreciating much more his capabilities as administrator of the Berlin Academy
than his "useless" mathematics.
25 In the XVII th and XVIII th centuries, and even more in the XIX th , many scientists
and more generally intellectuals were, in the protestant countries, sons of pastors,
no doubt because these were educated people. The corresponding phenomenon is
found more rarely in the catholic countries, but since the instruction there was
almost totally monopolised by the religious schools, the results were not very
different until the Revolution.