Math as Science, Science as Literature, Literature as Math?

Where have the days gone when we only thought about science as literature instead of mathematics as literature ☺. Now that we are once again in rather foreign territory, it’s interesting to read Lovelace, Morgan, and Venn through the lens of Darwin, especially in regards to Morgan’s questions of language and taxonomy.

What I am interested in thinking about is how we can read De Morgan’s “Formal Logic” and even Ada Lovelace’s “Sketch of the Analytical Engine” through a mathematical and a life science lens, especially in regards to how these authors formulate truths abut language. Lovelace’s commentary on the Analytical Engine posits progress embodied by the machine as “a new vast, and powerful language. . . developed for future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind” (19). Humans here seem prone to error; their arithmetic and ability to add can prove faulty. This Analytical Engine (which seems much greater than mankind through its capitalized name) is forward thinking and not stuck in the past. It uses symbols and numbers in ways that everyday citizens don’t have to understand. In terms of evolution, it functions in the exact opposite way: this machine emphasizes rapidity and seems very non-human. Darwin thought of evolution and its new varieties “as very slowly formed, for variation is a very slow process, and natural selection can do nothing until favorable variations chance to occur, and until a place in the natural polity of the country can be better filled by some modification of some one or more of its inhabitants.” Darwin’s use of the word “very slow” twice in one sentence only reinforces the idea that natural section moves at an incredibly slow rate.

In the above passage this engine is also placed on the earth to benefit “us.” Darwin however refused to see nature as benefitting mankind or thinking of man because in the large scale of things, humans, especially the individual, meant very little. Life would go on, the most suited to survive (even if these animals were relatively simple) would. The more complex here, the better and more alluring it seems for Lovelace.


With Morgan, truth becomes more complicated in regards to how one expresses truth through language. Today, math seems like the universal language; a form of universal communication (Well, at least if you know math). Ideas can be conveyed simply by being able to read the Greek alphabet or even the English alphabet even though as Morgan points out, the words and the meaning have no relation to one another, and the sign has no relation to the signified. Morgan writes “a name ought to be like a boundary, which clearly and undeniably either shuts in or shuts out, every idea that can be suggested” (20). Here, Morgan’s language takes on the characteristics of a door, and an often times (exclusive) locked one at that. Mathematics often focuses on boundaries as well; to get a clearer sense of boundaries allows you to look at a scale/graph on a smaller, magnified interval, instead of viewing all possible intervals, you need boundaries to think of where the problem is occurring, to be specific and to focus, to become less vague.

Of course, I preferred Darwin’s creative mind and the animals he constructed to Morgan’s perceptions of animals. Morgan’s definition of an elephant is a rather unexciting in that it is defined as “an animal which naturally drinks by drawing water into its nose, and then spirting it into its mouth” (21). This is the real definition of an elephant for Morgan (what he calls “real” maybe we could think of as the denotation of a word today). Of course, his definition in describing the elephant is rather interesting. Instead of using trunk he uses the word nose and pays no attention to its color, ears, or massive size. There are also at least two types of elephants: Asian and African. So I would ask in what other ways does Morgan classify words and how can we think of his taxonomies in relation to Darwin or mathematics? How do we see chance functioning in Venn/Darwin?