The organisation of thought, educational and scientific · Alfred North Whitehead
THE MATHEMATICAL CURRICULUM
Accordingly, the actual bookwork of the subject is reduced to very manageable proportions. I was told the other day of an American college where the students are expected to know by heart ninety formulæ or results in Trigonometry alone. We are not quite so bad as that. In fact, in Trigonometry we have nearly approached the ideal here sketched out as far as our elementary courses are concerned. The fourth stage introduces Analytical Geometry. The study of graphs in algebra has already employed the fundamental notions, and all that is now required is a rigorously pruned course on the straight line, the circle, and the three types of conic sections, defined by the forms of their equations. At this point there are two remarks to be made. It is often desirable to give our pupils mathematical information which we do not prove. For example, in co-ordinate geometry, the reduction of the general equation of the second degree is probably beyond the capacities of most of the type of students whom we are considering. But that need not prevent us from explaining the fundamental position of conics, as exhausting the possible types of such curves.
The second remark is to advocate the entire sweeping away of geometrical conics as a separate subject. Naturally, on suitable occasions the analysis of analytical geometry will be lightened by the use of direct deduction from some simple figure. But geometrical conics, as developed from the definition of a conic section by the focus and directrix property, suffers from glaring defects. It is hopelessly recondite. The fundamental definition of a conic, _SP_ = _e_ · _PM_, usual in this subject at this stage, is thoroughly bad. It is very recondite, and has no obvious importance. Why should such curves be studied at all, any more than those defined by an indefinite number of other formulæ? But when we have commenced the study of the Cartesian methods, the equations of the first and second degrees are naturally the first things to think about. In this ideal course of Geometry, the fifth stage is occupied with the elements of Projective Geometry. The general ideas of cross ratio and of projection are here fundamental. Projection is yet a more general instance of that one-to-one correlation which we have already considered under congruence and similarity. Here again we must avoid the danger of being led into a bewildering wealth of detail.
The intellectual idea which projective geometry is to illustrate is the importance in reasoning of the correlation of all cases which can be proved to possess in common certain identical properties. The preservation of the projective properties in projection is the one important educational idea of the subject. Cross ratio only enters as the fundamental metrical property which is preserved. The few propositions considered are selected to illustrate the two allied processes which are made possible by this procedure. One is proof by simplification. Here the simplification is psychological and not logical--for the general case is logically the simplest. What is meant is: Proof by considering the case which is in fact the most familiar to us, or the easiest to think about. The other procedure is the deduction of particular cases from known general truths, as soon as we have a means of discovering such cases or a criterion for testing them. The projective definition of conic sections and the identity of the results obtained with the curves derived from the general equation of the second degree are capable of simple exposition, but lie on the border-line of the subject. It is the sort of topic on which information can be given, and the proofs suppressed. The course of geometry as here conceived in its complete ideal--and ideals can never be realised--is not a long one. The actual amount of mathematical deduction at each stage in the form of bookwork is very slight. But much more explanation would be given, the importance of each proposition being illustrated by examples, either worked out or for students to work, so selected as to indicate the fields of thought to which it applies. By such a course the student would gain an analysis of the leading properties of space, and of the chief methods by which they are investigated.
The study of the elements of mathematics, conceived in this spirit, would constitute a training in logical method together with an acquisition of the precise ideas which lie at the base of the scientific and philosophical investigations of the universe. Would it be easy to continue the excellent reforms in mathematical instruction which this generation has already achieved, so as to include in the curriculum this wider and more philosophic spirit? Frankly, I think that this result would be very hard to achieve as the result of single individual efforts. For reasons which I have already briefly indicated, all reforms in education are very difficult to effect. But the continued pressure of combined effort, provided that the ideal is really present in the minds of the mass of teachers, can do much, and effects in the end surprising modification. Gradually the requisite books get written, still more gradually the examinations are reformed so as to give weight to the less technical aspects of the subject, and then all recent experience has shown that the majority of teachers are only too ready to welcome any practicable means of rescuing the subject from the reproach of being a mechanical discipline.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.