Ashworth-Memory, Efficiency, and Symbolic Analysis - Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and The Industrial Mind

Memory, Efficiency, and Symbolic Analysis: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and the
Industrial Mind
Author(s): William J. Ashworth
Source: Isis, Vol. 87, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), pp. 629-653
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Memory, Efficiency, and Symbolic
Analysis
CharlesBabbage, John Herschel, and the

IndustrialMind
By WilliamJ. Ashworth*
There are not two or more systems of Physical truthnor of Logical representationof it. -Are
we then to conclude that our minds are made to one patternor that all of them reflect one and
the same externaluniverse?
-John Herschel, "Scrapsof Philosophy"(n.d.)
Certain habits of mind may lead men to substitute for the Deity, certain axioms and first
principles as the cause of all-to thrustsome mechanisticcause into the place of God, instead
of raising their views, as great scientific discoveries have done, to some higher cause, some
source of all forces, laws, and principles.
-William Whewell, "Letterto CharlesBabbage"(1837)
THIS ESSAY EXAMINES THE ATTEMPTof John Herschel and CharlesBabbageto

discipline the human mind and speed up the operations of intelligence through a
philosophy of algebraicanalysis. Drawing on their contemporaryindustrialculture,they
promotedthe analyticalmethod as a mental labor-savingtechniqueassisting the memory
and as a technology that taught the mind efficient intellectual production.Herschel and
Babbage spent a great deal of time visiting factories and viewed themselves as the philo-
sophical equivalents of great industrialistssuch as James Watt, Matthew Boulton, and
William Strutt.They held that an algebraicsymbolic language provided a means to con-
dense language and ideas into symbols and renderedthe process of extractinga mathe-
maticalproof transparent.
Doing and observing operationson symbols, they believed, put the naked workings of
the mind on show. Indeed, the mind was renderedvisible and open to empiricalscrutiny
in exactly the same way as any other object of scientific study or manufacturingsite. The
way was then opened to the possibility of artificiallybuildingthe same kind of intelligence
into a machine;Babbage would spend the rest of his life pursuingthis quest. I begin with
* Departmentof Economic and Social History, University of Liverpool, 11 AbercrombySquare, Liverpool

L69 3BX, England.
Isis, 1996, 87: 629-653

C) 1996 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.
002 1-1753/96/8401-0001$01.00
629

630 MEMORY,
EFFICIENCY,
ANDSYMBOLIC
ANALYSIS
Figure1. JohnHerschel:
ATimeto Reflect.A portrait
of JohnHerschelby William
J. Ashworth
(1989) (based on the photograph by Julia M. Cameron [1867]).
an account of Herschel and Babbage's fascination with the factory system, then examine
how this interesttranslatedinto theiractivitiesat CambridgeUniversityduringthe factious
18 0Os.
THE FACTORYNMIN
On a damp Thursdaymorning, 20 July 1809, a tired seventeen-year-oldand his father
arrived early in the gray industrial city of Derby. The purpose of their visit was to observe
and analyze some of the local industry.Laterthat day they viewed "one of the silk mills,
workedby waterwheel." The following morningthey examineda "cottonmill (belonging
to Mr Win. Strutt),"and in the afternoonthey visited a "China(or ratherPorcelain)man-
ufactory."The young man was John Herschel, and his father was England's most cele-
brated astronomer,William Herschel. (See Figure 1.) The former described the cotton
works as "extremelybeautiful,on accountof the elegantmachineryemployed.The impulse
is given by a small steam-engine,and thence communicated."He then proceededto give
a detailed descriptionof the machine.'
I John Herschel, "TravelDiary, 1809-1810," 20-21 July 1809, HerschelPapers,HarryRansom Center,Uni-
citedas HerschelPapers,RansomCenter).
versityof Texasat Austin(hereafter

WILLIAMJ. ASHWORTH 631
The following month the Herschels observed a vast cloth manufacturingsite, "where
we saw the whole process of making the cloth, from the wool to the last finish."In July
1810 they visited the famous Boulton and Watt Soho Foundry in Birmingham:"After
Breakfast. . . Mr Watt, my fatherand self set off to the foundrySoho ... this foundryis
famous all over Europe,and as it were the source and fountainof every improvementin
machinerywhich has displayedthe power and ingenuityof man."As for its engine house,
"it is one of the most magnificentsights I ever rememberto have seen." Again, Herschel
proceededto give a very detailed descriptionof the machineryand layout.2
That evening they had dinner with James Watt. Herschel was breathlesswith wonder
at Watt's memory: "A memory stored with every part of elegant, useful, and in many
cases profound science, an invention ready in conceiving the most complicatedplans of
an activity, promptin their execution, these are even separatelyvery rare,but united they
form a prodigy."Here lies the focus of the philosophy of analysis I will be describing
throughoutthis essay. Its proponentsheld that the mind, much like a mill or a factory,had
to be correctly organized to retrieve ideas or data (liked stored goods or materials)effi-
ciently, without wasting humanmemory. In a factory, the speed and precision of produc-
tion dependedon its organization.Througha combinationof well-arrangedmemory and
analysis, the mind, too, could become more efficient at processing informationand better
at intellectualproduction.To Herschel, Watt's mind seemed to be organizedexactly like
the Soho Foundry:to view the foundry was to see a great mind.3The emphasis was on
systematicand efficient access to correctlyrecordedand processed thoughts.
Of all the man-madesites in Britainduringthe early nineteenthcentury,the factorywas
the most popularwith visitors. The historianof political economy RichardRomano has
claimed that what ArthurYoung was to travel and agriculture,Charles Babbage was to
the factory visit and machinery.Indeed, Babbage was a prolific observer of both British
and Continentalsystems of production-but he was by no means alone. During the late
eighteenth and especially the early nineteenthcentury the factory became a popularand
legitimate object of scientific study. Books describing visits to and layouts of factories
were as popular as earlier works on voyages to distant lands. The factory visit was as
appropriateto a philosopher's agenda as a trip to a renowned geological site, with the
majordifferencethatthe factorywas man made. Thus it representeda celebrationof man's
ingenuity (faith in his own power to create);as the political economist E. S. Caley noticed
in 1830: "Itis, indeed, a curiousreflection,what the powers of naturalagents, directedby
mind, may accomplish, without the interventionof hands; or, rather,with an immense
diminution of hands. The tendency of knowledge must be, though at an immeasurable
distance, in the result, the same in man as in the Deity, viz. to give power."4
2Ibid., 22 Aug. 1809, 17 July 1810.

3Ibid., 17 July 1810. For the relationshipbetween Babbage's notion of intelligence and the factory system
see Simon Schaffer, "Babbage's Intelligence: CalculatingEngines and the Factory System," Critical Inquiry,
1994, 21:203-227. For both Babbage and Herschel see William J. Ashworth, "The Calculating Eye: Baily,
Herschel, Babbage, and the Business of Astronomy,"British Journalfor the History of Science, 1994, 27:409-
441.
4 Richard M. Romano, "The Economic Ideas of Charles Babbage," History of Political Economy, 1982,
14:385-405, on p. 402; and E. S. Caley, On CommercialEconomy,in Six Essays: Viz.,Machinery,Accumulation

of Capital, Production, Consumption,Currency,and Free Trade (London, 1830), p. 19. ArthurYoung (1741-
1820) was a well-known agriculturistand travel writer. See also Maxine Berg, The Machinery Question: The
Makingof Political Economy, 1815-1848 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1982), pp. 179-202; and Stana
Nenadic, "Businessmen,the UrbanMiddle Classes, and the 'Dominance' of Manufacturersin Nineteenth-Cen-
tury Britain,"EconomicHistory Review, 1991, 44:66-85. Some examples of popularbooks describingfactories
are Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures(London, 1832); Andrew Ure, The

632 MEMORY,EFFICIENCY,AND SYMBOLICANALYSIS
CAMBRIDGE IN THE 1810S
By the nineteenthcenturythe actualworkingsof the mind, for certainmen of science, had

become a legitimatesite of empiricalstudy.No longer a sacredsphere,the mind was being
put on show like any other object of study. These investigatorsheld thatmathematicswas
not limited to what it could prove in the outside world but could be used to describe the
actual faculty of understanding.Apartfrom its obvious materialistimplications,this view
suggested thatproof of the existence of God need not dependon Scriptureor an empirical
argumentabout divine design. In the following, I look at a peculiarlyindustrialnotion of
intelligencethatwas constructedby BabbageandHerschelas undergraduatesat Cambridge
University duringthe 1810s.
Througha combinationof Newtonian bigotry and French prejudice,so the traditional
tale goes, Cambridgehad sunk by the second half of the eighteenth century into what
Joseph Priestley famously described as a "stagnantpool." The mathematicstaughtthere
was fashioned for an environmentdesigned to produceclergymen for the church,which,
in turn,was intrinsicallyconcernedwith the preservationof the political alliance between
the church and the state. Within this environment,Babbage and Herschel founded the
short-livedAnalytical Society in 1812. This small studentbody has been the source for a
wealth of secondary material that has considered, variously, the society's place in the
reform of English mathematicsand the CambridgeTripos and the republicanand deist
sympathiesof Herschel and Babbage.5My work seeks to show that the really important,
and hithertoneglected, aspect of the analyticals' work is their link with industryand its
accompanyingvalues of efficiency and power.
During the early 1810s the universitywas in the midst of a fundamentaland passionate
debate concerning the distributionof the Bible: "The walls of the town were placarded
with broadsides,and posters were sent from house to house." Should the Bible be distrib-
uted with or withoutthe Book of CommonPrayer?HerbertMarsh,the MargaretProfessor
of Divinity at Cambridge,had no doubt: the prayerbook must be distributedas a com-
panion to the Bible to prevent false interpretations.He argued:"It is not the Bible itself
but the perversionof it, the wresting of the scriptures... by the 'unlearnedand unstable,'
with which Englandnow swarms,whence the dangerproceeds."In short,the poor had to
be taught the Bible by the EstablishedChurchif the security of church and state was to
be preserved.6The heart of this debate centered on social control and the role of the
Philosophy of Manufactures(London, 1835); Peter Barlow, A Treatise on the Manufacturesand Machineryof

GreatBritain (London, 1836); GeorgeDodd, Days at the Factories, or the ManufactoryIndustryof GreatBritain
Described (London, 1843); and William Cooke Taylor, Factories and the Factory System (London, 1844).
5 See, e.g., Phillip Enros, "The Analytical Society: Mathematicsat CambridgeUniversity in the Early Nine-
teenth Century"(Ph.D. diss., Univ. Toronto, 1979); Enros, "The Analytical Society (1812-1813): Precursorof
the Renewal of CambridgeMathematics,"Historia Mathematica, 1983, 10:24-47; M. V. Wilkes, "Herschel,
Peacock, Babbage,and the Developmentof the CambridgeCurriculum,"Notes and Recordsof the Royal Society
of London, 1990, 44:205-219; Menachem Fisch, "The ProblematicHistory of Nineteenth-CenturyBritish Al-
gebra,"Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1994, 27:247-276; and, more generally,John Gascoigne, Cambridgein the Age of the
Enlightenment:Science, Religion, and Politicsfrom the Restorationto the French Revolution(Cambridge:Cam-
bridge Univ. Press, 1989). The political and theological agenda of Herschel and Babbage has recently been
discussed in Harvey W. Becher, "Radicals,Whigs, and Conservatives:The Middle and Lower Classes in the
AnalyticalRevolutionin Cambridgein the Age of Aristocracy,"Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1995, 28:405-426; and Kevin
Knox, "Dephlogisticatingthe Bible: Natural Philosophy and Religious Controversy in Late Georgian Cam-
bridge,"History of Science, 1996, 34:167-200.
6 HerbertMarsh,An Inquiryand an Address to the Membersof the Senate of the Universityof Cambridge,
Occasioned by the Proposal to Introducein This Place an AuxiliaryBible Society (Cambridge,1811), p. 10. For
a useful overview of the work of Marsh see Thomas Baker, History of the College of St. John the Evangelist,

Anglican universities. For Marsh, social control could be entrustedonly to the clergy of
the EstablishedChurch,for which Cambridgewas a principalsource of supply.
The Bible Society-the source of the view that the Bible should be distributedon its
own-was composed of Dissenters as well as Anglicans. Marsh fervently believed that
many Dissenterswho supportedthe Bible Society did so simply because it challengedthe
establishedsociostructuralhierarchy.As he made clear: "If [the Bible Society] is attended
with evil, it receives a tenfold augmentation,by being fixed in a seat of education."Setting
up a branchat Cambridgehad serious repercussions:"Whatmust it be when established
in a place, where the youth of this kingdomwill be taughtto embraceit, andto disseminate
that evil throughoutthe British dominions?"Marsh's main opponent, the LucasianPro-
fessor of Mathematics,Isaac Milner,accused him of being paranoidandblocking the good
that would obviously proceed from the distributionof the Bible by itself.7
Meanwhile, in his room at Trinity College, Babbage "drewup the sketch of a society
to be institutedfor translatingthe small work of Lacroix on the Differential and Integral
Calculus. It proposedthatthe Society should have periodicalmeetings for the propagation
of D's; and consigned to perditionall who supportedthe heresy of dots. It maintainedthat
the work of Lacroix was so perfect that any comment was unnecessary."8As I will show,
Babbage's parody of the Bible Society was not simply humorous;his own quest was to
disseminatethe "evil of analysis"throughoutthe British dominions.
The traditionaltask of the English universities was to defend the Anglican faith and
preventintellectualchallenges that endangeredthe holy alliance of churchand state. The
powerful political philosopherand memberof ParliamentEdmundBurke had confidently
assertedthe security of that alliance to a spellboundHouse of Commons in 1773: "She
[the Churchof England]has the securityof her own doctrines,she has the securityof the
piety, the sanctityof her own professors;theirlearningis a bulwarkto defend her; she has
the security of the two universities."By the 1810s, after the long Napoleonic wars, these
safeguardswere faltering.Modernalgebraicanalysis was a symbol of the unnaturalevents
in France, the "dreadfulenergy" of human intellect set free from all social restraints.
Moreover, it was increasinglyassociated with a mechanizedculture.There was no room
or need for such "unnatural" productsin the curriculumof the sacredorderof Cambridge.
Innovationand discovery were unnecessary,since all the essential answersto greatphilo-
sophical and religious questions were alreadyknown. The EstablishedChurch,the state,
and Oxbridge formed a virtuous union that safeguardedthe valuable inheritanceof the
English constitution.9As I will show, a form of abstractreasonthatinevitablyshiftedfaith
Cambridge(Cambridge,1869), pp. 735-898. For a closer examinationof the Cambridgeauxiliaryto the Bible
Society during this period see Knox, "Dephlogisticatingthe Bible"; and Robert Hole, Pulpits, Politics, and
Public Order in England, 1760-1832 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1989), p. 191.
7Herbert Marsh, Consequencesof Neglecting to Give the Prayer Book with the Bible (Cambridge,1812), p.
55; and Isaac Milner, Strictureson Some of the Publications of the Rev. HerbertMarsh, Intendedas a Reply to
His Objectionsagainst the British and Foreign Bible Society (London, 1813), p. 381.
8 CharlesBabbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864; London:Pickering& Chatto, 1991), p. 20
(quotation);and David Bloor, "Hamiltonand Peacock on the Essence of Algebra,"in Social History of Nine-
teenth-CenturyMathematics,ed. HerbertMehrtens,Henk Bos, and Ivo Schneider (Boston: Birkhauser,1981),
pp. 202-231.
9 EdmundBurke,"Onthe Second Readingof a Bill for the Relief of ProtestantDissenters"(House of Commons
Speech, 1773), in The Worksof EdmundBurke, 6 vols. (London, 1886), Vol. 5, p. 338. See also Sheldon
Rothblatt,"The Student Sub-cultureand the ExaminationSystem in Early Nineteenth-CenturyOxbridge,"in
The Universityin Society, ed. Lawrence Stone (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1975), pp. 247-303, on p.
291 ("dreadfulenergy," "unnatural"products);and R. R. Fennessy, Burke, Paine, and the Rights of Man: A
Difference of Political Opinion(The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1963), pp. 147-148.

inward-emphasizing the innatehumanability to invent and create-seriously challenged

these presumptions.For those who held thatthe world-like Scripture-was thereto prove
God's design, morality, and intelligence, the human mind was simply the divine tool on
earth that made this connection intelligible. Within this context, the actual operationsof
the mind were not a legitimate object of study, and they were certainlynot reducibleto a
materialistseries of mechanicaloperationsgoverned by visible laws.
The particularFrench methods of the calculus advocated by the analyticals not only
challenged an institutionallyingrainedNewtonian tradition,but the powerful analytical
machine of Joseph Louis Lagrange's algebraic calculus was perceived as dangerousby
conservativeAnglicans on two grounds.First, as is well known, it was associatedwith the
mentality accompanyingthe French Revolution, which in turn was seen as a productof
human fantasy cut loose from philosophy, tradition,and reality. The abstractnatureof a
pure algebraic calculus seemingly allowed the mind to wander into fantasy throughthe
meaningless manipulationof symbols. Second, and perhapsmore important,the new cal-
culus confrontedan establishedorder that feared that the industrynewly penetratingthe
landscapewas also impinging on the realm of the mind.
Analysis is a system that attempts to ground anything complex in a set of simpler
elements. By the mid-eighteenthcentury "simple analysis"was being employed to solve
problemsby reducingthem to equations.The majorityof analysts on the Continentwere
now linking calculus with the formal concept of a function insteadof with conceptionsof
geometry. Many came to view analysis as the applicationof algebrato geometry:proof
was demonstratedthroughalgebraic techniques ratherthan geometrically.The fluxional
calculus held motion to be essential to the method of fluxions and was thus rejected as
nonalgebraic.In Cambridge,on the contrary,as Harvey Becher has shown, all "of the
textbooks relied upon geometricfigures ratherthan algebraicabstractions,ratiosand pro-
portionsratherthan equations,and specific physical foundationsratherthanmathematical
generalisation."Pure mathematicswas not partof a Cambridgeeducation;rather,the end
of the Tripos was Newton's Principia. The analyticalswere concernedwith the structure
of analysis and not with its applicationto naturalphilosophy. As they declared in their
"Planof a New Society": "The Society, conceiving that the Physical sciences keep pace
with the progressof analysis, will principallyhave in view the advanceof that department
of the mathematics.It will endeavourto introducemore generally the foreign notationin
Analytical science regardinggeometry and geometricaldemonstration,as contraryto its
ultimate objects."10Their type of analysis was propagatedin the form of Lagrange's al-
gebraic formulationof the differentialcalculus based on the Taylor series.
For the analyticals the foundation of all knowledge was abstracttruth. The axioms
underlying the creation and subsequentfunctioning of the world were the same as the
operations involved in human invention. Therefore the plan of the world and proof of
God's existence could be found in the operationsof intelligence. This was puredeism and
in step with a certain Dissenting ideology. The formerexcise collector, bridge architect,
and political radical Tom Paine wrote: "It is a fraud of the Christiansystem to call the
sciences humaninvention;it is only the applicationof them that is human.Every science
has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterableas those by which the
'0 Harvey W. Becher, "WilliamWhewell and CambridgeMathematics,"Studies in History and Philosophyof

Science, 1980, 11:1-48, on pp. 7, 10; and "Plan of a New Society," Herschel Papers, St. John's College,
Cambridge.For the establishmentof Newtoniannaturalphilosophy in Cambridgesee Gascoigne, Cambridgein
the Age of the Enlightenment(cit. n. 5), pp. 142-184.

universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover
them."11I
Babbage cultivated much of his republicanoutlook during his early teens, when he
occasionally met Lucien Bonaparte,the exiled younger brotherof Napoleon, at his home
in Worcestershire.Herschel's nonconformistviews were laterto cause anxietyfor his wife,
Margaret:"We must have our Herschel a decided and recognised Christian,a 'city set on
a Hill'-but perhaps it must be attemptedmore on our knees and in our conduct and
conversationsthanby our arguments... he confesses, thathe was not accustomedto work
the life of a humbleand sincereChristianliving andrejoicingin theirGod."12 For Herschel
and Babbage, God was to be found not in traditionand Scripturebut, rather,in man's
mind and in nature.The key was to ground and organize the operationsof intelligence
into an efficient, atemporalsystem of production.
This outlook clearly went against a powerful prevailingview that society had its own
temporalinner life of growth and adaptationthat could ultimatelybe known only by the
Creator.Institutionsformed throughcenturiesof experience could not be reducedto first
principles.JohnPocock has shown thatBurke,the leading public spokesmanfor this view,
was an enemy of rationalreform "insofaras it threatenedto substitutethe active intellect
for the social order of which it was part."At the heart of Burke's fears "is always the
vision of an intellectualand professionalclass which ... is no longer a clergy or content
Herscheland Babbagefittedthis descrip-
to be the clients of liberalaristocraticpatrons.""3
tion exactly and indeed set about a mission to improve the operationsof the intellect and
create a new rationalizedorder.Their task was to replace the holy alliance and a growing
emphasis on revealed religion with a virtuous collaborationof the state and industrial
reason.
Aristocraticpower, sustainedby the sanctionsof divine authorityand historicalprece-
dence, was being challengedby attackson establishedreligion, by an expandingindustrial
culture,and by the emergenceof a self-confidentcommerciallybased class. Intellectually,
it was being threatenedby efforts to establish, formalize, and make visible the operations
of intelligence. Human creativity-this subversive view held-was not bestowed by the
grace of God; rather,it was a productof thinkingcorrectly.The analyticalswere partof
a materialisttraditionin philosophypursuingan inquiryinto the activity of life andmatter.
This traditionwas an integral component of reformistprojects for the rearrangementof
authority'inthe realm of social and physical relations.14
Efficient and correct mental operations,in the view of the reformers,dependedcom-
Tom Paine, The Age of Reason, Pt. 1 (1794), rpt. in The Selected Workof Tom Paine, ed. Howard Fast
(London:Bodley Head, 1948), p. 300.
12 MargaretHerschelto Dr. J. Stewart,4 May 1837, in Lady Herschel: Lettersfrom the Cape, 1834-1838, ed.
Brian Warner(Cape Town: Friendsof the South AfricanLibrary,1991), pp. 132-133. See also her letterto Rev.
John Rare, 16 Jan. 1856, Herschel Papers, Ransom Center. On Babbage's republicanoutlook see Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher(cit. n. 8), pp. 150-15 1: andAnthonyHyman,CharlesBabbage:Pioneer
of the Computer(Oxford:Oxford Univ. Press, 1982), p. 29.
13 J. G. A. Pocock, "Burkeand the Ancient Constitution:A Problem in the History of Ideas" (1960), rpt. in
Politics, Language, and Time (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 202-232, on p. 203. See also Pocock,
"The Political Economy of Burke's Analysis of the FrenchRevolution"(1983), rpt. in Virtue,Commerce,and
History(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1985), pp. 193-212; andPocock, "Introduction," in EdmundBurke,
Reflectionson the Revolutionin France, ed. Pocock (Indianapolis:Hackett, 1987), pp. 7-56, on pp. 37, 47, 39.
14 See Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology,Medicine, and Reform in Radical London
(Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1989); and Simon Schaffer, "Statesof Mind: Enlightenmentand NaturalPhi-
losophy,"in TheLanguagesof Psyche: Mindand Body in EnlightenmentThought,ed. G. S. Rousseau(Berkeley:
Univ. CaliforniaPress, 1987), pp. 223-290.

pletely on the organizationof the mind. Indeed, accordingto Herschel and Babbage, the
mind shouldideally functionwith the reliabilityandproductivityof a well-orderedfactory.
Such functioning was, in turn, contingent on the division of mental labor: "It has been
shown, thatthe division of labouris no less applicableto mentalproductionsthanto those
in which materialbodies are concerned."15
THE OPERATIONS OF INTELLIGENCE
The analyticals' emphasis on notationultimatelyrepresentsa quest to find the essence of

the grammarof a universal symbolic language and to make visible the foundations of
nature and the mind. As Edward Bromhead, an enthusiastic member of the Analytical
Society, wrote to Babbage in 1821: "I am glad you continue to work at the Philosophical
theory of Analysis, I have always consideredNotation as the Grammarof symbolic lan-
guage." Bromheadwas probablyreferringto a paper Babbage was writing for the Cam-
bridge PhilosophicalSociety, "On the Influenceof Signs in MathematicalReasoning,"in
which he preachedto his audience:"Themultitudeof significationswhich attachto many
of the words that compose our ordinarylanguage, is a disadvantagewhich is completely
removed from that of analysis."16The analyticalswere on a quest to find a mental tech-
nology that was universal,efficient, visible, and, consequently,immune to ambiguityand
corruption-a traitthey believed characterizedthe old paternalworld of interestspropped
up by Scripture.Babbage reflected that because of the massive increase in the "accumu-
lation of new materials,as well as from the variousdressin which the old may be exhibited,
nothing appearsso likely to succeed as a revision of the language in which all the results
of the science are expressed."This programis connected to a whole spectrumof political
reforms during this period, perhaps none more so than Jeremy Bentham's search for a
concise, uniform,and consistent language of jurisprudence.17
As well as being informed by French analysts such as Lagrange and Pierre Simon
Laplace,Babbage and Herscheldrew upon Scottishphilosopherssuch as Adam Smith and
Dugald Stewart.Herschelwas taughtmathematicsat home by the Scottish accountantand
mathematicianAlexander Rogers, who was in turn patronizedby the Edinburghnatural
philosopherJohn Playfair. Rogers sent Herschel details of Sylvestre FrancoisLacroix's
Differential and Integral Calculus in November 1808. He also advised Herschel to read
the Mecaniqueanalytiqueby Lagrange,which he considereda "good preparationfor the
study of Laplace's work."18
15 CharlesBabbage, Economyof Machineryand Manufactures(cit. n. 4), p. 379.
16
EdwardBromheadto CharlesBabbage, 7 Mar. 1821, Babbage Papers,British Library,London (hereafter
cited as Babbage Papers); and Babbage, "Onthe Influenceof Signs in MathematicalReasoning,"Transactions
of the CambridgePhilosophical Society, 1827, 2 (readon 16 Dec. 1821), rpt.in The Worksof CharlesBabbage,
ed. MartinCampbell-Kelly(London:Pickering& Chatto, 1989), Vol. 1: MathematicalPapers, pp. 371-408, on
p. 372.
17 Babbage, "Influenceof Signs," p. 372. For Herschel and Babbage's attackson the English scientific estab-
lishment duringthe 1820s see Ashworth,"CalculatingEye" (cit. n. 3). For Babbage's notorious assault see his
Reflectionson the Decline of Science in England and on Some of Its Causes (London, 1830), rpt. in Worksof
Babbage, ed. Campbell-Kelly,Vol. 7. On Bentham see L. J. Hume, Bentham and Bureaucracy (Cambridge:
CambridgeUniv. Press, 1981). Hume describes Bentham's method of "analyticalexhaustion"on pp. 60-61.
18 AlexanderRogers to John Herschel, 5 Nov. 1808, 6 Jan. 1809, Herschel Correspondence,Royal Society of
London (hereaftercited as Herschel Correspondence); for Playfairsee Rogers to Herschel,6 Jan. 1812. Rogers
was clearly an accomplishedmathematician.At one point he was offered a position at the MilitaryAcademy in
Greenwich but declined the post, preferringhis accountancyjob with the London and EdinburghShipping
Company; see Rogers to Herschel, 1 Jan. 1813. For the place and importanceof accounting in the Scottish
Enlightenmentsee M. J. Mepham, "The Scottish Enlightenmentand the Development of Accounting,"in Ac-
counting History: Some British Contributions,ed. R. H. Parkerand B. S. Yamey (Oxford:Oxford Univ. Press,
1994), pp. 268-293. Babbage's and Herschel's philosophicalclaims can be found in the preface to the unsuc-
cessful Memoirs of the Analytical Society (Cambridge,1813), p. ii.

Herschel and Babbage were seeking to rearrangethe social order in accordancewith

economic and rationalprinciples,emancipatedfrom traditionand the continuityof history.
For Burke, Milner, and countless others, this separationfrom the concrete past made
abstractstudies unnaturaland politically subversive. For the analyticals, human culture
progressedthroughthe developmentof humanreason,while for the Burkeanmind culture
precededreason, the social orderantedatedthe humanintellect and thus definedthe con-
ditions of human interaction.Society was organic and defined by the accumulatedexpe-
rience of the past. Therefore,to change dramaticallythe whole fabric of society would
destroy, as Pocock puts it, "ourown intelligence and our capacities to replace it, since we
should be destroyingthe only reasons for acting, and even living."19
Hence when Herscheland Babbagecondemnedthe safe, traditionalgeometrythatdom-
inatedEnglish mathematics,they were also threateningthe prevailingmodel of the world.
Burke had always been clear on this issue: "Thatgreat chain of causes, which links one
to another,even to the throneof God himself, can never be unravelledby any industryof
ours. When we go but one step beyond the immediately sensible qualities of things, we
go out of our depth."Heavyweight opposition also came from leading men of science.
For example,the well-knownnaturalphilosopherThomasYoung condemnedthe industrial
and mechanicalnatureof modem analysis:
the stronginclinationwhich has been shown, especially on the continent,to preferthe algebra-
ical to the geometricalform of representation,is a sufficientproof, thatinsteadof endeavouring
to strengthenand enlightenthe reasoningfaculties, by accustomingthem to such a consecutive
train of argumentas can be fully conceived by the mind, and representedwith all its links by
the recollection, they have been desirous of sparingthemselves as much as possible the pains
of thought and labour, by a kind of mechanical abridgement,which at least only serves the
office of a book of tables in facilitatingcomputations.20
It was the way Frenchanalysisprovidedthe means to industrializethe mindthatworried

Young and others.But for Herscheland Babbagethis was one of its virtues.Analysis was
a mental labor-savingtechnology, an efficient tool in the productionof knowledge thanks
to its ability to speed up the process of discovery while "preservingthe mind unfatigued
by continuedeffortsof attentionto minorparts."Babbagelaterwarnedthatin mathematical
science seemingly abstracttruths, devoid of useful application in one period, might in
anotherage be the foundationof importantinvestigations;still later, they might be sim-
plified and reducedto tables to aid the philosopher,artist,and sailor. But for the Burkean
mind, Britain'sinstitutionscould neverembodythis dissolute"mechanicphilosophy."This
insistence must be seen within a context in which many believed that Britain's success
against the Frenchwas literally due to the nation's cultivationof its moral qualities.21
19Pocock, "Introduction,"
in Burke, Reflectionson the Revolutionin France, ed. Pocock (cit. n. 13).
20
EdmundBurke,A Philosophical Inquiryinto the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublimeand Beautifulwith an
IntroductoryDiscourse Concerning Taste, and Several Other Additions (1756; London, 1823), pp. 186-187;
andThomasYoung, "AnEssay on Cycloidal etc.,"BritishMagazine, 1800, quotedin Enros,"AnalyticalSociety"
(cit. n. 5), p. 72. On the threatof Frenchmetaphysicsand Painite propagandasee Albert Goodwin, Friends of
Liberty: The English Democratic Movementin the Age of the French Revolution(London:Hutchinson, 1979),
p. 30. For Burke's rhetoricalattack on Enlightenmentchemistry see Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture:
Chemistryand Enlightenmentin Britain, 1760-1820 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1992), pp. 177-187;
and Maurice Crosland,"The Image of Science as a Threat:Burke versus Priestley and the 'PhilosophicRevo-
lution,' " Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1987, 20:277-307. See also Sheldon Rothblatt,Traditionand Change in English
Liberal Education: An Essay in History and Culture (London: Faber & Faber, 1976), p. 161; and Rothblatt,
"StudentSub-culture"(cit. n. 9), pp. 287, 291.
21 Herschel and Babbage, Memoirs of the Analytical Society (cit. n. 18). See also Asa Briggs, The Age of
Improvement,1783-1867 (1956; London: Longmans, 1963), p. 172; and Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the
Nation, 1707-1837 (London:Pimlico, 1992).

The analyticals can be termed "intellectualindustrialists":they viewed knowledge as

wealth, and they saw England's productionas demonstrablydepreciatingin comparison
to that on the Continent.They were fierce supportersof an industrial-basedeconomy; the
commercialvalues of system, time, and economy pervadedtheir notion of intelligence. It
is not a coincidence that Babbage, the son of a successful banker,and Herschel, the son
of a Hanoverianrefugee, spoke of analysis in financial terms: "The capital of science,
however, from its very nature,must continue to increase by gradualyet permanentaddi-
tions; at the same time that all such additionsto the common stock yield an interestin the
power they afford of multiplyingour combinations,and examiningold difficultiesin new
points of view." The limits of analysis expanded throughthis process of connecting the
permanentstock of knowledge with fresh sources. This was not a widespreadview; in
particular,the university was not considered a place to produce new knowledge. But
Babbage and Herschel insisted that Britain's intellectualmanufacturingbase requiredre-
form. The analyticalshoped to inject intellectualcapital into the economy througha sci-
entific system of discovery based on the operationsof symbolic algebra.22
As we saw in the opening section of this essay, the analyticalswere clearly influenced
by the actual implementationsof the division of labor employed by great industrialists
such as Matthew Boulton and James Watt. Herschel explained that "Economyis the ap-
plying everythingto its best use." Hence, "Economyof time-This is to time whatindustry
is to power";power itself, he claimed, was characterizedby "Promptness,"which in turn
was describedas "Poweracting rapidly-it is a resultantequality compoundedof Power
and Time. Much Power X Little Time.
P
- (mental power understood)."
T
Thus mentalpower, like industrialpower, was dependenton the reductionin time required
for its operations,and this in turn relied on the division of mental labor. Herschel was
unyielding in his message: "Maximumefficiency"depends on "Economyto carryevery-
thing to its highest,"while "meretime is dirt-except insofaras it is convertedandworked
up into opportunityby industry."Opportunitythus is a crucial factor of time, since "in-
dustry ... is that which manufacturestime into opportunity"-and the faster the better.23
Consciousnessof ourown exertionsilluminatedour own power, which itself was exercised
by humanwill. Hence a betterknowledge of the mind's operationswould enable them to
be refined, quickened, and thus made even more industrious-just as observing the pro-
cesses involved in manufacturinga materialproductin a factory could lead to their im-
provement.Accounting for the mind's operationsrequiredthat they be visible. Once this
move was made, the supposed operationsof intelligence could be artificiallybuilt into a
machine.
The analyticals,as I have suggested, viewed themselves as the intellectualequivalents
of industrialistssuch as Strutt,ErasmusDarwin, Josiah Wedgwood, Boulton, and Watt.
For Herschel,"thehistoryof science in all its branches... shews thatevery greataccession
to theoretical knowledge has uniformly been followed by a new practice, and by the
22
Herschel and Babbage,Memoirsof the AnalyticalSociety, pp. xxi-xxii. See also NortonWise, with Crosbie
Smith, "Workand Waste: Political Economy and NaturalPhilosophy in Nineteenth-CenturyBritain(II),"Hist.
Sci., 1989, 17:391-449, esp. p. 414.
23 John Herschel, "Elementsof Greatness,"n.d., Herschel Papers, Ransom Center.

abandonmentof ancient methods as comparativelyinefficientand uneconomical."24 Some

of these themes were expoundedby leading philosophersacross the borderin Scotland.
THE SCOTTISH AND FRENCH CONNECTIONS
Ranged against Herschel's "new practice"and the commercial values of a rationalDis-

senting elite were the powers of the aristocracyand the clergy. The analyticalsbelieved
that this holy alliance was an outmodedcartel in need of overturning.John Playfair,pro-
fessor of mathematics(from 1785 to 1805) and professorof naturalphilosophy(from 1805
to 1819) at EdinburghUniversity, also blamedthe clergy for thwartingthe productionand
accumulationof knowledge. He pleaded that "whateverhas served for the discovery of
truth, has a charactertoo sacred to be rashly thrown aside, or to be sacrificed to the
fastidious taste of those who make truthWelcomeonly when it wears a particulardress,
and appears arrangedin the costume of antiquity."Mathematics-specifically, at Cam-
bridge-had traditionallybeen clothed, defined, and taught by the clergy. The editor of
the EdinburghReview, FrancisJeffrey, recalled that "for the benefit of those who wished
to cultivate the higher branchesof the science, [Playfair]taught at intervalsa thirdclass,
rendereddoubly valuableby his intimateand masterlyknowledge of the modernanalysis,
at that time so little attendedto in Britain."What was common to Playfair and the ana-
lyticals was the use of algebraas a tool to assist the mind in the managementof thought.
This same point was made by Dugald Stewart,professorof moralphilosophyat Edinburgh
University (1785-1828) and later a friend of Babbage.25
Duringthe Napoleonic wars, Edinburgh'sleadingphilosopherscame undera darkcloud
of suspicion in which any innovation could be damningly labeled Jacobinism.Stewart,
who privately approved of Tom Paine's Rights of Man and some of Jean Antoine de
Condorcet's "subversiveideas," found it necessary to apologize in private to Judge Ab-
ercrombyand withdrawhis supportfor those ideas.26Stewart'slate colleague, the recently
deceased professorof naturalphilosophyJohnRobison, was held in contemptby Herschel
and Babbage. A violent assault on Robison's Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, pub-
lished in 1804, appearsin the margins of Herschel's copy of the work. In 1797 Robison
had publishedhis paranoidProofs of a Conspiracyagainst All the Religions and Govern-
ments of Europe. This widely distributedbook helped feed the alreadyfrenziedsuspicion
of anythingmoving in a republicandirection. Exploiting his credibility as a well-known
academic,Robison was able to cast leading Frenchphilosopherssuch as Condorcet,Jean
Le Rond d'Alembert, Denis Diderot, and Laplace as wicked infidels. His chief British
targetwas the UnitariannaturalphilosopherJosephPriestley.Robison workedmercilessly
to crush the mechanized, irreligious, metaphysicalthought of France and the dangerous
radicalismhe detected trespassingon the outskirtsof the establishedhierarchyin Britain.
24
John Herschel, "GreatPhysical Theories,"n.d., Herschel Papers, Ransom Center. It should be noted that
this statementwas partof a paragraphHerschel subsequentlyput a line through.
25
Playfairis quoted in Enros, "AnalyticalSociety" (cit. n. 5), p. 60; Jeffrey is quotedin Niccolo Guicciardini,
The Developmentof Newtonian Calculus in Britain, 1700-1800 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1989), p.
99. See also John Playfair, "Review of Bue's Memoire Sur les Quantities Imaginaires," EdinburghReview,
1808, 12:306-318, on p. 318; and Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 3 vols.
(London, 1792), Vol. 2, pp. 50-51.
26J. B. Morrell,"TheophobiaGallica: NaturalPhilosophy, Religion, and Politics in Edinburgh,1789-1815,"
Notes Rec. Roy. Soc. Lond., 1971, 26:43-63, on pp. 44-45; and A. C. Chitnis, The ScottishEnlightenmentand
Early VictorianEnglish Society (London:CroonHelm, 1986), pp. 23-24. Abercromby,an anti-Jacobin,was one
of Scotland's leading legal authorities.

640 MEMORY,
EFFICIENCY,
ANDSYMBOLIC
ANALYSIS
The Scottish philosopherWilliam Hamiltonlater wrote that Robison

preferredthe ancientmethodof studyingpuregeometry,and even felt a dislike for the Cartesian
method of substitutingsymbols for operationsof the mind, and still more was he disgusted
with the substitutionof symbols for the very objects of discussion, for lines, surfaces, solids,
and their affection.... And he came at last to consider algebraic analysis little better than a
kind of mechanicalknack, in which we proceed without ideas of any kind, and obtain a result
without meaning and without being conscious of any process of reasoning.
Again, it was the idea of a mechanizedmindthathauntedRobisonandfueled his onslaught.
Herschel could barely restrainhis dislike-comments such as "nonsense,""horridnon-
sense," "abominable,"and "mostvile" smear the marginsof his copy of Robison's book.
In one section Robison comments on Laplace's account of Saturn'sring: "The whole of
this analysis of the mechanismof Saturn'sring is of the most intricatekind, and is carried
on by the authorby calculus alone, so as not to be instructiveto any but very learnedand
expert analysts."Herschel underlined"is carriedon by the authorby calculus alone" and
inserted the before calculus, while in the margin he wrote, "This is what sticks in our
author'sthroat."A few chapterslaterRobison attackedLaplace's theoryof tides, in which
the Frenchanalysthad claimed there was no difference between the superiorand inferior
tides of the same day. Robison argued that Laplace's assertion "is not founded on the
observationsthathave been published [at Brest, Rochefort,and Port l'Orient],and it does
not agree with what is observed in the other ports of Europe."In reply Herschel sarcas-
tically scribbled:"unfortunateLaplace have pity Robison on the poor sinnerdo not quite
mush him in your earth-consider he is but a worm in comparisonwith yourself."27
Herschel and Babbage's stress on systematizationand economizing mental labor had
led them to Lagrange'salgebraiccalculus. As we have seen, with its emphasis on abbre-
viation, symmetry, and unity, Lagrangiancalculus sat well with their industrialagenda.
For French analysts like LazareCarnot,Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, J. M. de Gerando,
Condorcet,Lacroix, and Joseph-Diez Gergonne,as well, there is a centralinterestin and
emphasis on algebra. Maria Panteki has demonstratedthe link between Condillac's se-
miotic philosophyandthe mathematicaltheoriesof LagrangeandLaplace.Condillacwrote
in 1792 that "the techniqueof reasoningis thus the same in all the sciences. As, in math-
ematics, we state the problem by translatingit into algebra;so in the other sciences, we
state it by translatingit into the simplest expression possible." Condillac also had a sig-
nificantimpact on Lacroix's work. It seems clear that Condillac's emphasison algebraas
a precise language of reasoning filteredits way directly or indirectly,via his Frenchand
Scottish followers, into the philosophy of Herschel and Babbage.28
27 William Hamilton,On the Studyof Mathematics,2nd ed. (London, 1854), p. 217, quoted in RichardOlson,
British Philosophy and British Physics: A Studyin the Foundationsof the VictorianScientificStyle (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975), p. 21; and John Robison, Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, being the
Substance of a Course of Lectures on That Science (Edinburgh,1804), Vol. 1, pp. 517, 646. I would like to
thank Sidney Ross for allowing me to quote Herschel's marginalscribblingsin this book.
28 Etienne Bonnot, Abb6 de Condillac, Logic, or the First Developmentsof the Art of Thinking(Paris, 1792),
rpt. in Philosophical Writingsof ttienne Bonnot, Abbe de Condillac, trans. FranklinPhilip with HarlanLane
(London:Erlbaum,1982), pp. 343-418, on p. 414; and MariaPanteki,"Relationshipsbetween Algebra,Differ-
ential Equations, and Logic in England, 1800-1860" (Ph.D. diss., Middlesex Univ., 1991), pp. 59-60. For a
closer look at Frenchmathematicaldevelopmentsin this period see LorraineDaston, "MathematicalObjectsand
MathematicalProof: The Early Nineteenth-CenturyDefence of Geometric Method against the New Analysis"
(Diploma in the History and Philosophy of Science, CambridgeUniv., 1975); and Joan L. Richards,"Rigorand
Clarity:Foundationsof Mathematicsin Franceand England, 1800-1840," Science in Context, 1991, 4(2):297-
319. Richards shows the different paths and contexts in which French and British mathematicswere moving
duringthis period. On the influence of Condillac see Enros, "AnalyticalSociety (1812-1813)" (cit. n. 5), p. 39;
and Ivor Grattan-Guinness,"CharlesBabbage: Productionby Numbers,"Annals of Science, 1990, 47:81-87,
esp. p. 85.

At the heartof the analyticals' objectives was the conservationof mental labor and the
increasein mental speed throughan algebra-basedsymbolic language.As Babbagewrote:
The power which we possess by the aid of symbols of compressinginto a small compass the
several steps of a chain of reasoning,whilst it contributesgreatlyto abridgethe time which our
enquirieswould otherwiseoccupy, in difficultcases influencesthe accuracyof our conclusions:
for from the distance which is sometimes interposedbetween the beginning and the end of a
chain of reasoning,althoughthe separatepartsare sufficientlyclear, the whole is often obscure.
This observationfurnishes anotherground for the preferenceof algebraicalover geometrical
reasoning.
In short, the actual operationsof algebrarepresentedthe correctand most efficient mode

of mentalreasoning.29
An understandingof the activities of the humanmind was a prerequisiteto all studies.
Stewarthad made this point in his Elementsof the Philosophy of the HumanMind, where
he wrote:"inevery exercise of our reasoningandof our inventivepowers, therearegeneral
laws which regulatethe progressof the mind, and when once these laws are ascertained,
they enable us to speculate and to invent, for the future, with more system, and with a
greatercertaintyof success." Stewartbelieved that naturehad adaptedthe laws of asso-
ciation in the human mind to its own operations. By drawing the analogy between the
materialand the moral world, Stewarthad providedlegitimacy for the empiricalstudy of
the mind. The "operationsof our minds ... are found to be the result of a comparatively
small number of simple and uncompoundedfaculties, or of simple and uncompounded
principlesof action. These faculties and principlesare the generallaws of our constitution,
and hold the same place in the philosophy of mind, that the general laws we investigate
in physics, hold in that branchof science."30
Although Stewart always publicly maintainedhis supportfor the pedagogical uses of
geometry,the analyticalswere nonethelessattemptingto respondto his plea for a language
of the mind, capable of describing its differentoperations,that would be independentof
a language borrowedfrom the objects of our senses. Babbage made his debt to Stewart,
and his own viewpoint, clear in a letter to Helen Stewartin 1821:
The series of Essays which I once mentioned to him [Papers on the Philosophy of Analysis]
are now considerablyadvanced and will near their conclusion. I ventureto hope that he will
not read withoutinterest,those [illegible word] which the influence of his writingsinducedme
to take of the science to which I was attachedand ... shall hope thathis friendlycriticismwill
have as much influence in improvingmy later writings as his works on the Philosophy of the
Mind madein directingthe courseof my earliest.... The subjectI have chosen is I am confident
capable of furnishing(when skilfully treated)the strongestpracticalillustrationof the advan-
tages which result from the applicationof that science to all others.1
29 Babbage,"Influenceof Signs"(cit. n. 16), p. 376. See also Stewart,Elementsof the Philosophyof the Human
Mind (cit. n. 25), Vol. 2, p. 52. For some of the similaritiesbetween the Scottish common-sense traditionand
the ideas of Herschel see Olson, British Philosophy and British Physics (cit. n. 27), pp. 13, 252-270.
30 Stewart,Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. 2, pp. 49, 341, 318, 10. Babbage claimed
thathe "hadderivedmuch instructionfrom thatvaluablework";see his Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
(cit. n. 8), p. 474. Further,his first biographersays: "At an early period of life Mr Babbage became fascinated
by the genius of Dugald Stewart":H. W.Buxton'sMemoirof the Life and Laboursof the Late CharlesBabbage,
ed. Anthony Hyman (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), p. 350. Babbage gave Stewart'sremarkson dreams
as partof his disputationat Cambridgeand named his son EdwardStewartafter him.
31 Babbage to Helen Stewart,draft letter, Apr. 1821, Babbage Papers.

ALGEBRAIC MYSTERIES AND THE POLITICS OF SYMBOLS
In TheAge of Reason (1794), Tom Paine claimed that all men are-or should be-engi-
neers ratherthan clergymen and alludedto the possibility of a new canonical chapter:
It is the structureof the universe that has taught this knowledge [truetheology] to man. That
structureis an ever-existingexhibitionof every principleupon which every partof mathematical
science is founded.... The man who proportionsthe several parts of a mill, uses the same
scientific principles,as if he had the power of constructinga universe;but as he cannot give to
matter that invisible agency, by which all component parts of the immense machine of the
universe have influence upon each other and act in motional unison together, without any
apparentcontact, and to which man has given the name of attraction,gravitation,andrepulsion,
he supplies the place of that agency by the humble imitationof teeth and cogs. -All the parts
of mans microcosm must visibly touch: but could he gain a knowledge of that agency, so as
to be able to apply it in practice, we might then say, that anothercanonical book of the word
of God had been discovered.32
Paine was attunedto a certainoptimism that humanintelligence could create and rebuild
the socioeconomic and political terrainafresh, accordingto a rationalplan. He invited his
readersto think about the argumentfrom design as expoundedby William Paley in Evi-
dences of Christianity(1794)-a set text for Cambridgeundergraduates.Herschel and
Babbage, althoughcertainlynot radical Painites, were nonetheless exponents of this late
eighteenth-centuryfaith.
Paley described God as the perfect engineer who had created the ideal machine, as
revealed in the design of the naturalworld. The analyticalstook it a step furtherand saw
the mind as a machine whose operations are described by analysis. We have seen that
Burke and numerousothers feared this mechanical outlook, particularlyas embodied by
"the operationsof the machinenow at work in France."In this context it is not surprising
to find the Rev. D. M. Peacock warning: "Thereis in truth no one point on which the
University should be more upon its guard,than againstthe introductionof mere algebraic
or analytical speculationsinto its public examinations. ... Academical educationshould
be strictlyconfinedto subjectsof real utility,"unlike "thelucubrationsof Frenchanalysts,"
which "haveno immediatebearingupon philosophy."33
A major impetus to Herschel's and Babbage's fervent analytical enthusiasmwas the
harm they perceived as emanating from the growing emphasis on revealed religion. A
precursorto the debate over the legitimacy of abstractmathematicshad alreadyoccurred.
George Berkeley, in his attack on the fluxional and differentialcalculus, had shown in
1734 that the facts of the world were "revealed"by "Divine Faith"and that the modem
analysts could not "apprehendclearly and inferjustly";they were dangerousand actively
"makinginfidels."Berkeley, fighting the spreadof deism, blamed most of the evils of his
day on the rise of irreligion. Like Herschel and Babbage, "freethinking"Christianssuch
as Anthony Collins and Matthew Tindal had used a form of mathematicsto challenge
accepted theological doctrines and the established sociopolitical terrain.They were ex-
ponents of naturalreligion based on a version of reason that they propagatedas the only
Paine, Age of Reason, Pt. 1 (cit. n. 11), p. 302.

32
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Pocock (cit. n. 13), p. 147; and D. M. Peacock, A
33
ComparativeView of the Principles of the Fluxional and Differential Calculus Addressed to the Universityof
Cambridge(Cambridge, 1819), p. 85, quoted in J. M. Dubbey, The Mathematical Workof Charles Babbage
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1978), pp. 46-47.

way "to cleanse the subjectof all its defects and set it on a solid, rationalbasis."34In other
words, mathematicswas promotedon the groundsthatit helped free the mind of prejudice
and interests.
William Frend,who had been expelled from Cambridgein 1793, also condemnedneg-
ative and imaginarynumbersbecause they supportedBerkeley's argumentand, thus, re-
vealed religion.35Berkeley pointed to the roots of negative numbersand infinitesimalsto
show that mathematicswas as plagued by disputes as divinity was. He argued that the
fluxions and infinitesimalsused by the mathematicianswere as obscure as anything in
Christianity.But while mysteries are an intrinsic part of religion, the strange nature of
calculus underminesits claim on certaintyand rationality.Mathematicswas as vulnerable
to deception as any other subject;beneaththe mathematicalsymbols lurkednothing.
Frendworkedrelentlesslyto reduce algebrato universalarithmeticand abolishnegative
numbers.Some years later he told his son-in-law, the UnitarianmathematicianAugustus
De Morgan,"I am very much inclined to believe thatyour figment| - 1 will keep its hold
among mathematiciansnot much longer than the Trinity does among theologians."Al-
thoughthe analyticalssharedFrend'spolitical views, in theircontemporarycontextBerke-
ley's argumentspresentedno difficulties.To those trainedin the rulesof algebraicanalysis,
mathematicalsymbols and negative numbers acquired legitimacy through the logic of
analytical operations.Their meaning was a product of their manipulation.As Herschel
privatelywrote, "Itis not truththatwe have the abstract-that we must find-but we have
thefaculty of abstractionto enable us to find it."36
Joan Richardsneatly capturesthe problemposed by negative and imaginarynumbers:
"Theirchallenge was essentially to mediate between the blind results created in the con-
sistent developmentof mathematicalsystems and the subject matterthese systems were
supposedto describe."How could negative numbersbe legitimatein the real world?Sym-
bolic algebraprovideda powerful tool for bypassing the restrictionsof arithmetic.Within
its enclosed language, the symbols did not depend upon an external referent for their
meaning, but simply on their initial relationshipwithin the system. Analysis was a tool
for discovering knowledge, while geometry was derived from observation.Furthermore,
Herschel claimed, geometriclines were ultimatelyas vulnerableas symbols:
if we think that any accession of distinctnessis here to be gained by graphicalrepresentation,

we deceive ourselves, and offend against the essential natureof all analysis. This will appear
more sensibly, when we reflect, that in a complex problem, some of the data may involve an
unperceivedcontradiction:all our constructionswill thus be impossible, and the lines, angles,
&c. on which we have been reasoning,can in no way have been real pictures of what they are
supposedto represent.Yet we go reasoningon without regardto this, till at some more or less
remote step the contradictionstrikes us. It does not then at all follow, because we construct
diagrams,and representmagnitudesby lines, &c. that therefore we are conversantonly with
34 George Berkeley, The Analyst; or, A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician Wherein,It Is
Distinctly Conceived,or More EvidentlyDeduced, than Religious Mysteriesand Points of Faith (London, 1734),
pp. 94, 4; and Geoffrey Cantor, "Berkeley's The Analyst Revisited," Isis, 1984, 75:668-683, on p. 677. On
revealed religion see Boyd Hilton, TheAge of Atonement:The Influenceof Evangelicalismon Social and Eco-
nomic Thought,1785-1865 (Oxford:Clarendon, 1988); and A. M. C. Waterman,Revolution,Economics, and
Religion: ChristianPolitical Economy, 1798-1833 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1991).
35 Bloor, "Hamiltonand Peacock on the Essence of Algebra"(cit. n. 8), pp. 226-227.
36 For the remarkto De Morgan,and on Frendand other critiquesof symbolic algebra,see Helena M. Pycior,
"EarlyCriticisms of Symbolical Algebra,"Hist. Math., 1982, 9:392-412, on p. 396; and Knox, "Dephlogisti-
cating the Bible" (cit. n. 5), p. 179. For Herschel'sclaim see JohnHerschel,"Scrapsof Philosophy,"n.d., Herschel
Papers,Ransom Center.

644 MEMORY, ANDSYMBOLIC
EFFICIENCY, ANALYSIS
realities. This is only the case when, having arrivedat a real conclusion by the interventionof
arbitrarysymbols, (be they lines or letters,) we retraceour steps in synthetic order.The very
same may be said of the most abstractalgebraicinvestigation.37
The analytical program was a judicial forum: "Every train of reasoning implies an
exercise of the judgement,which, being an operationof the mind, deciding on the agree-
ment or disagreementof ideas successively presentedto it, it is reasonableto presumewill
be more correct, in proportionas the ideas compared follow each other closely." For
Herschel and Babbage, the progress of society depended on expert industrialanalysts.
Their work at this moment in history was to make the world fit the structureof analysis:
"Ourbusiness is exclusivelywith the pure Analytical."38
The analyticalmethod could be applied to anything.Historically,analysis would show
successive developmentsin the progressof knowledge until it culminatedin its final stage,
when true knowledge would equal true theology. In analysis, an "arbitrarysymbol can
neitherconvey, nor excite any idea foreign, to its originaldefinition."With each improve-
ment would come a new symbol that in turn would shorten the traditionalapproach.A
whole trainof consequenceswould develop, prescribingthe pathfor futureinvestigations.
Harry Wilmot Buxton, Babbage's personally chosen biographer,recorded his mentor's
quest: "Hebelieved thatthe successful accomplishmentof the constructionof an universal
languagewas dependentupon a previous and complete classificationof our ideas. He saw
that in such an analysis the clear perceptionof the relation of ideas with their symbols,
was the necessary foundationupon which to build the structure."39
William Whewell noted Herschel's new emphasis on the actual mental processes op-
eratingin the progressof science, as opposed to mere descriptionof the natureof human
knowledge and the laws of humanthought.40It is no coincidence that, as describedin the
preface to the Memoirsof the Analytical Society, the history of the differentialcalculusis
played out in synchronizationwith its mathematicalprinciples. Notation mirroredthis
development, since with the advancementof science and complex calculations,the need
for a clear and comprehensivenotationbecame apparent.Thus, as science progressed,so
too did notation, and-more important-the process of discovery and productionwas
speeded up. In its ultimateextension, notationwould be capableof "definingthe resultof
every operationthat can be performedon quantity,by the general term of function, and
expressing this generalisationby a characteristicletter."Philosophicalinvention could be
understoodonly by observing the operationsof the mind in conjunctionwith the history
37 Joan L. Richards, "The Art and Science of British Algebra: A Study in the Perception of Mathematical
Truth,"Hist. Math., 1980, 7:343-365, on p. 345. See also Richards, Mathematical Visions: The Pursuit of
Geometryin VictorianEngland (San Diego, Calif.: Academic, 1988); and, on the differentuses of algebraand
geometry, Daston, "MathematicalObjects and MathematicalProof' (cit. n. 28), p. 64. John Herschel wrote his
paper "Mathematics"in 1816, some fourteenyears before it was publishedin the EdinburghEncyclopaedia in
1830. The MS of this article can be found at St. John's College, CambridgeUniversity. The actual published
paper is reprintedin Silvan S. Schweber, ed., Aspects of the Life and Thoughtof John Herschel (New York:
Arno, 1981), pp. 434-459; the quotationis on p. 437.
38 Herschel and Babbage, Memoirs of the Analytical Society (cit. n. 18), p. iv. Menachem Fisch has shown
that the analyticals"optedfor the Lagrangiancalculus out of a concern for pure ratherthan for 'mixed' math-
ematics":Fisch, " 'The EmergencyWhich Has Arrived':The ProblematicHistoryof Nineteenth-CenturyBritish
Algebra-A ProgrammaticOutline,"Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1994, 27:247-276, on p. 266.
39 Herscheland Babbage,Memoirsof theAnalyticalSociety, p. i; andBuxton's Memoirof Babbage, ed. Hyman
(cit. n. 30), p. 347 (italics added).
40 William Whewell, "Modem Science-Inductive Philosophy,"QuarterlyReview, 1831, quoted in Richard
Yeo, "Reviewing Herschel's Discourse,"Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci., 1989, 20(4):541-552, on p. 545. See also John
Herschel,A PreliminaryDiscourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (London, 1830), Ch. 2, esp. pp. 18-19.

of knowledge: "to observe the operationsof the mind in the discovery of new truths,and
to retainat the same time those fleeting links, which furnisha momentaryconnectionwith
distantideas.... Powerful indeed, must be that mind, which can simultaneouslycarryon
two processes, each of which requiresthe most concentratedattention.Yet these obstacles
must be surmounted,before we can hope for the discovery of a philosophical theory of
invention."4'
This self-reflective and historical approachwas an importantfeature of Babbage's un-
published"Philosophyof Analysis,"writtenduringthe late 1810s. His plan was to excite
those who possessed the "raretalentof invention"to observe theirown mentaloperations.
This activity was illuminatedthroughan examinationof the principlesthatlinked all those
who had contributedto the advancementof knowledge. Herschelremindedhis readerthat
"the History of Science is the History of the Mind."42The true operations of the mind
were based on the same reasoningthat linked all discoveries.
For Babbage,the same rules operatedwithinthe humanmind andthroughoutthe history
of knowledge: "Any successful attemptto embody into language those fleeting laws by
which the genius of the inventoris insensibly guided in the exercise of the most splendid
privilege of intellect, will contributemore to the futureprogress of mathematicalscience
than anythingthat has hithertobeen accomplished."Algebraic analysis was the founda-
tional languageof this materialistworld. Aspects of Herschel's analyticalhardline can be
seen in his article "Mathematics,"which, though written in the late 1810s for the Ency-
clopaedia Metropolitana,was published in 1830. In it he argued that pure mathematics
rested "solely on our intuitiveperceptionsof abstracttruth"and demanded"no assistance
from inductive observation,and very little from the evidence of our senses." This repre-
sented the apex in the hierarchyof humanknowledge. Induction,in the end, could not be
trusted, since the observations it was based upon, no matterhow carefully made, were
always ultimatelyliable to humanlimitationsor misinterpretation.43 A pure mathematical
base was necessary to show us when we had erred.It was throughanalyticreasoningthat
observationcould be guided and confirmed.This contrastswith the philosophyand math-
ematics propagatedby men such as Milner, Young, and, later, Whewell.
Most of Herschel's article on mathematicsis concernedwith analytic history. By this I
mean a history of mathematicsthat reveals both the analytic threadto "real"progress in
knowledge and the applicationof analytic reasoning in discovering it. Herschel claimed
there were three distinctperiods of mathematicaldevelopment:the geometricalstage;the
discovery and developmentof algebraiccalculus; and the final period, which he said was
beginning-the foundationof symbolic language. The analyticalstruly believed that "the
golden age of mathematicalliterature"was "undoubtedlypast."Herschelclaimedthatonce
the symbolic languagewas perfectedit would be "foundadequateto every purpose."44
41 Herschel and Babbage, Memoirs of the Analytical Society (cit. n. 18), pp. xvi, xxi. The Scottish analytical
mathematicianWilliam Spence gave this definitionin 1809: "A functionis the analyticalexpressionof the result
which certainoperationsproduceon a given quantity,or on any numberof given quantities."See his "Essayon
the Theory of the Various Ordersof LogarithmicTranscendents"(1809), in MathematicalEssays by William
Spence, ed. JohnHerschel(London, 1819), p. ii. See also Herschel,"Whewellon the InductiveSciences," Quart.
Rev., 1841, 68:177-238, rpt. in Herschel, Essaysfrom the Edinburghand QuarterlyReviews (London, 1857),
pp. 142-256, on pp. 148, 154.
42 CharlesBabbage, "ThePhilosophyof Analysis,"BabbagePapers;and Herschel, "Whewellon the Inductive
Sciences," p. 160.
43 Charles Babbage, "Observationson the Analogy Which Subsists between the Calculus of Functions and
Other Branches of Analysis," Philosophical Transactions, 1817, 107:197-216; and Herschel, "Mathematics"
(cit. n. 37), pp. 434-435.
4" Herschel and Babbage,Memoirsof the Analytical Society (cit. n. 18), p. xxi; and Herschel, "Mathematics,"
p. 436.

The language they adoptedto sell their method was characterizedby historicallegiti-
mation. The preface to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society was an early example of the
use of history as a means of legitimation and persuasion, a tactic that became a very
successful part of Herschel's weaponry throughouthis career. The technique of using
history to legitimate an argumentor ideology quickly established itself in other areas as
well. In politics during the 1820s it was masteredby what RichardBrent has called the
LiberalAnglicanWhigs, such as C. E. PoulettThomson,J. C. Hobhouse,GeorgeMorpeth,
and, especially, John Russell. This new tool supplantedlate eighteenth-centuryrational
arguments,which had been tarnishedby the exigencies of the French Revolution. Ironi-
cally, Herschel and Babbage used it to bring an industrializedversion of Enlightenment
reason back into currency. Brent argues that his Liberal Anglicans utilized history to
produce a populist picture in which Whig heroes were in the fore and on the side of the
people. The object of this technique was to refashion Whiggery in order to ensure its
survival. Herschel and Babbage used it in their attemptto refashion science and promote
industrialreason. English rationalDissenters had alreadyused a form of this tactic during
the late eighteenthcentury:JosephPriestleyand William Godwin peddledEnglish history,
claiming that it taughtlessons on liberty and free inquiry.45
WILLIAM WHEW7ELL'SOPPOSITION TO PURE ANALYSIS
In 1815, after a brief and unhappyspell readinglaw, Herschel returnedto Cambridgeas

a subtutorand examinerin mathematicsfor St. John's College. His mission was to impress
"theprinciplesof the truefunctionalfaith andpractice"further.He was zealously supported
by Babbage, who saw a great opportunityto convert souls:
what a glorious opportunityyou have of spreadingthe true faith young converts are the only
ones to hope from. I consider JFWH as the Apostle of Analysis as a missionaryto untutored
savages who have never heardof the Glorious truththat
dz dz
dx dy dy dx
I hope you will purge away the diagramswhich like cobwebs have obstructedtheirprogressin
the paths of truth.
The Cambridgeestablishmentwas furious when George Peacock, a formermemberof the

Analytical Society, introduced"d's into the papers"in 1817: "Wood, Vince, Lax and
Milner were very angry and threatenedto protest against analytic and Frenchmathemat-
ics." Whewell told Herschel that Peacock's examinationquestions had "strippedhis anal-
ysis of its applicationsand turnedit naked among them."46
Herschel and Babbage expected to find the externalworld in the structureof analysis.
Whewell, conversely, expected to find the external structurefirst and then see whether
analysis could be applied to it. Indeed, his first pedagogical text on mechanics in 1819
was carefully constructedto repel the formerview:
45RichardBrent, Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery,Religion, and Reform, 1830-1841 (Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1987), p. 43. See also J. E. Bradley,Religion, Revolution,and English Radicalism:Non-conformity
in Eighteenth-CenturyPolitics and Society (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1990), p. 146.
46Herschel to Babbage, 24 Sept. 1815, Babbage to Herschel, 13 Nov. 1815, George Peacock to Herschel, 4
Mar. 1817, Herschel Correspondence;and William Whewell to Herschel, 6 Mar. 1817, in I. Todhunter,Life of
Whewell,2 vols. (London, 1879), Vol. 1, p. 16.

It appearsas if their [Frenchmathematicians']attachmentto the forms and processes of pure

analysis, which they have cultivated with such signal success, had given them a disrelish for
the more physical and inductivepartof the reasoning,and made them comparativelyindifferent
as to the mannerin which they arriveat thatpartof the subjectwhere the machineryof analysis
begins to work. Hence those principleswhich mechanics mustborrowof experimentare often
made to depend on abstractreasonings and artificialdefinitions:or introducedas self evident,
with some slight notice as to their agreementwith mattersof fact.
Whewell's treatise introducedContinentalanalysis into the CambridgeTripos but fully

dressed in the traditionalCambridgeclothing of Newtonian mechanics. Herschel could
barely restrainhis disappointment,claiming that the work would have "been much more
widely circulated,had you conformeda little more to the taste of the age and a little less
to that of the University."47
Faith turned inward, toward the structureof the mind's faculty of abstraction,was
intrinsic to the needs and purposes of Herschel's and Babbage's representationof the
world. During this period of surging evangelicalism there was an emphasis on human
inadequacy, and human reason, defined as a tool of discovery, was rejected. Geometry
was acceptable, for it could safely strengthenthe powers of the mind (as it had done
throughoutthe eighteenth century) without teaching students to question the pillars of
tradition.This was the view of the LucasianProfessorMilner and, later,of Whewell, who
viewed the expansion of analysis-especially pure analysis-as threatening"to destroy
the foundationsof a liberal education."48Analysis had no respect for the past or God and
too much faith in the operationsof the mind.
By 1830 Whewell was vigorously promoting a new curriculumthat would eliminate
from the universityprecisely that destabilizingand ungodly pursuitof innovationthat the
analyticalepitomized.In his Thoughtson the Studyof Mathematics,as a Part of a Liberal
Education(1835), he recommendedgeometricalreasoningbecause "such a kind of study
will require and occasion more thinking than the mere applicationof technical rules."
Further,a "scheme of study which escapes or tries to escape the labourof thinking,will
answer none of the purposes at which we ought to aim." He concluded by offering the
extreme solution of abolishing algebrafrom the Tripos:"let the knowledge of Algebrabe
requiredno longer, for I can hardlybelieve that this part of our mathematicalteaching is
of much value in any point of view." The mechanizationof the mind throughthe grinding
operations of algebraic analysis conflated human morality with the physical world. To
discipline the mind throughalgebraicanalysis was to force it into an iron cage, requiring
it to interpretthe world in a particularway that was insensible to moral evidence and to
"those finer perceptionsof fitness and beauty, in which proprietyof action and delicacy
of taste must have their origin."49
47 William Whewell, An ElementaryTreatiseon Mechanics, Vol. 1 (Cambridge,1819), p. vi; and Herschelto
Whewell, 1 Dec. 1819, Whewell Papers,TrinityCollege, Cambridge(hereaftercited as Whewell Papers). The

following references to Whewell's correspondenceare taken from William Ashworth, ed., A Calendar of the
Correspondenceof WilliamWhewell(Cambridge:TrinityCollege, 1996).
48 Becher, "Whewell and CambridgeMathematics"(cit. n. 10), p. 3.
49 William Whewell, Thoughtson the Study of Mathematics,as a Part of a Liberal Education (Cambridge,
1835), pp. 42-44, 3. For an examinationof Whewell's role in defining the content andjurisdictionof science in
the early nineteenth century see Richard Yeo, Defining Science: William Whewell,Natural Knowledge, and
Public Debate in Early VictorianBritain (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1993). For his conservatismsee
PerryWilliams, "Passingon the Torch:Whewell's Philosophy and the Principlesof English UniversityEduca-
tion," in WilliamWhewell:A CompositePortrait,ed. MenachemFisch and Simon Schaffer(Oxford:Clarendon,
1991), pp. 117-147. For his role in the propagationof geometry at Cambridgesee Richards,Mathematical

A decade later the Cambridgemathematicianand astronomerroyal, George Airy, at-

temptedto soften Whewell's Burkeandislike of analysis and innovation:"I do not think
that you give sufficientattentionto the magnitudeof the step made, to the vastness of the
powers acquired,by the mere perceptionthat symbols may be used for numbers-both in
threateningunknownnumbersas if they were known-and in threateningknown numbers
by general symbols. It is like the step in intellect from childhoodto manhood."However,
he acknowledged that Whewell was correct to guard against developments such as the
Analytical Society and against "such a treatiseas Babbage proposed 'on the principlesof
d-ism, in opposition to the dot-age of the University.' "50
Whewell had an uneasy and ambivalentrelationshipwith the CambridgeTripos.On the
one hand, he recognized that it had to be competitive to maintainhigh standards,but the
mechanicaland factory mentalitybeing installed in the coaching system greatlydisturbed
him. Whewell found unequivocal supportfor his argumentsfrom the Eton- and Oxford-
trainedconstitutionalhistorianHenry Hallam, who congratulatedhim on his supportof
geometry. However, Hallam had to confess being pleasantly surprisedthat someone in
Whewell's position should still prefergeometryto algebraas the foundationof permanent
studies in mathematics.He totally agreed with Whewell's conclusions regardinggeome-
try-"that it is more logical & deductive, & that it makes the propertiesof the external
world more distinctlybefore the eye."'I This emphasison geometry,as we have seen, kept
reasoningwithin the realmof traditionalAnglican education,for which the mindremained
a divine and mysteriousplace and proof of God was to be found in both the externalworld
and Scripture.
Babbage's unofficial BridgewaterTreatisewas writtenprimarilyas an answerto Whe-
well's very popularAstronomyand GeneralPhysics ConsideredwithReferenceto Natural
Theology (1833). According to Babbage, miracles were not a breach of establishedlaws
but were programmedinto their calculation.He targetedWhewell's treatise,in particular,
because it condemned"cultivatorsof the more abstractbranchesof mathematicalscience."
In his responseto Babbage's criticisms,Whewell laid out for the readersof theAthenaeum
just what was at stake: "Certainhabits of mind may lead men to substitutefor the Deity,
certain axioms and firstprinciples as the cause of all; -to thrustsome mechanisticcause
into the place of God."52Where was the morality in a mechanical faculty? No wonder
Whewell devoted most of the 1840s and 1850s to moral philosophy.
Babbage's work on his calculatingmachine was the marchof the materialintellect set
to the rhythm of the factory. Whewell's close friend and intellectual ally, the Trinity
College graduateHughJamesRose, whose views were informedby GermanRomanticism,
had made these feelings clear as early as 1822:
Visions (cit. n. 37), pp. 13-50. For the influence of GermanRomanticismon Whewell see Robert 0. Preyer,
"TheRomanticTide ReachesTrinity:Notes on the TransmissionandDiffusion of New Approachesto Traditional
Studies at Cambridge, 1820-1840," Annals of the New YorkAcademy of Sciences, 20 Apr. 1981, 360:39-68;
Geoffrey N. Cantor,"Between Rationalismand Romanticism:Whewell's Historiographyof the Inductive Sci-
ences," in WilliamWhewell,ed. Fisch and Schaffer,pp. 67-86: and Yeo, Defining Science, pp. 66-71.
50
George Airy to Whewell, 5 Oct. 1845, 22 May 1845, Whewell Papers.
51 HenryHallamto Whewell, 13 Nov. 1845, Whewell Papers.On the industrialization of the CambridgeTripos
duringthe 1830s see AndrewWarwick,"Exercisingthe StudentBody: Mathematicsand Athleticismin Victorian
Cambridge,"in Carnal Knowledge: The Physical Representationof the IntellectualSelf ed. Steven Shapinand
ChristopherLawrence(Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, forthcoming).
52 Charles Babbage, The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (London, 1837), p. x; and Whewell, "Letterto Charles
Babbage,"Athenaeum,30 May 1837.

Whatmost provokesme is to hearthe prateof its defenders[Scottishphilosophy]& its opposers

when they come to the connexion of it with Religious mattersas if both it & the Locke system
did not alike lead to the most hopeless scepticism as to the existence of a first Cause. And I
hate both alike as leading to the cultivationof the sensible part of man instead of his spiritual
& teaching people to occupy themselves with the theory of differences & the knowledge of
formulae, which if a man knew all about them that was [is] or can be known, leave him just
where he was not wiser but fuller-not with a more occupied understanding;leaving much
instead the same sort of thing as Babbage's calculating machine-Indeed I believe that the
approximationof the operationsof the mind & of machineryis a very fit occupation for the
Mechanic school.53
Intelligence was not a set of mechanicaloperations.Analysis had no respect for the past
or for God and too much faith in the operationsof the mind and an industrialfuture.The
ultimate manifestationof the analyticalfaith came in Babbage's endeavorto build a cal-
culating machine. (See Figure 2.)
MEMORY AND FORESIGHT
For Herschel and Babbagethe faculties of perceptionand discriminationwere mechanical

and were based on the operationsof modem analysis. We see this confidence expressed
in Babbage's accountof the developmentof his Difference Engine duringthe 1820s. After
explaining the basic principles of calculating by differences and their applicationto ma-
chinery, Babbage proceeded to claim that his machine functionedin a mannersimilar to
the humanfaculties of memory and foresight:
The mechanical means I employed to make these carriagesbears some slight analogy to the
operationof the faculty memory. A toothed wheel had the ten digits markedupon its edge;
between the nine and the zero a projectingtooth was placed. Wheneverany wheel, in receiving
addition,passed from nine to zero, the projectingtooth pushed over a certainlever. Thus, as
soon as the nine seconds of time requiredfor addition were ended, every carriagewhich had
become due was indicatedby the alteredposition of its lever. An arm now went round,which
was so contrivedthat the act of replacingthat lever caused the carriagewhich it indicatedto
be made to the next figure above. But this figure might be a nine, in which case, in passing to
zero, it would put over its lever, and so on. By placing the arms spirally round an axis, these
successive carriageswere accomplished.54
This was accomplishedin the building of the Difference Engine No. 1.

By the early 1830s Babbage had startedwork on the mental faculty of foresight: "At
last having exhausted, during years of labour, the principle of successive carriages, it
occurredto me thatit might be possible to teach mechanismto accomplishanothermental
process, namely-to foresee.... As soon as that was attained,the next step was to teach
the mechanism which could foresee to act upon that foresight."This mental act charac-
terizedhis theoreticaldevelopmentof the AnalyticalEngine. Babbage'sbiographer,Henry
Wilmot Buxton, was burstingwith pride at his mentor'sachievement:he had taughtbrass
and iron to think.55
Babbage applied this argumentin his unsolicited Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837).
First, he asked when we become satisfied, through induction, that a series of numbers
follow a law-after 500, 1,000, or 50,000? He then gave a series of numbersthatsuddenly
53 Hugh James Rose to Whewell, 5 Oct. 1822, Whewell Papers.

54 Babbage,Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (cit. n. 8), p. 46.
55 Ibid.; and Buxton's Memoirof Babbage, ed. Hyman (cit. n. 30), p. 48.

650 MEMORY,
EFFICIENCY,
ANDSYMBOLIC
ANALYSIS
M;>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...
i.>. ..
3~~~~
Figure 2. Thought,Matter,and Babbage.A drawingby WilliamJ. Ashworth(December 1994).
changed-at 100,010,002-from an arithmeticalchange of 1 at every operationto a series

of triangularnumbers,each multipliedby 10,000, which again changed at anotherfigure
to a new law. Babbage claimed that a machine that has "embodied in its mechanical
structure,that more general law of which all the observed laws were but isolated portions
... displays far greatergeneralitythanthatwhich demands,at every change in its law, the
The Analytical Engine could be made to producea
direct interventionof its contriver."'56
series of naturalnumbersin regularorderfor a certainnumberof places and then switch
to anotherlaw-and so on. (See Figure 3.)
Much the same "switch"happened,Babbage argued,when a caterpillarchanged into a
56Babbage,Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (cit. n. 52), p. 8. For the circumstancesin which this unofficialBridge-
watertreatiseappeared
see JohnTopham,"ScienceandPopularEducation
in the 1830s:TheRoleof theBridge-
water Treatises," Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1992, 25:397-430.

WILLLAM
J. ASHWORTH 651
~~~~~~~~
..~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
......i
,~~~
A .. .. .. .
... ............
. .
Figure 3. "APlan of Mr.Babbage's GreatCalculatingEngine (1840). (FromAnthonyHyman,

CharlesBabbage:Pioneerof theComputer Oxford
[Oxford: University
Press, 19821.)
butterflyor a geologicalchangeoccurredon the earth'ssurface.Both alterations,he

claimed,were analogousto mechanicalchanges of law. In the lattercase Babbageprobably
had in mind Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, published in three volumes between
1830 and 1833, which outlinedthe argumentfor uniformitarianism.Lyell certainlythought
as much:
The argumentof laws comes home to some of my geological speculations. No doubt some
withpossibilities
peoplewouldnotlike anyreasoningwhichmademiraclesmorereconcilable
in the ordinarycourse of the universe and its laws; but you do not write to please them. They
are shockedat the idea of an eruptionof a volcanobeingforeknownwhichwas to destroy
Sodom and Gomorrahbut your break in the sequence is more of a miracle than a volcanic
eruption. I think your estimate of the Creator's attributesmuch higher than theirs, and that
everyonemayfollowso far.57
Since "the workings of machineryran parallelto those of intellect, at definite periods,

knownonly to its maker,"wrote Babbage,"a certainlever might become moveabledunng
the calculationsthen making."The result might cause the then-existinglaw to be violated
one or more times, after which the original law would resume its force. Babbage's Ana-
lytical Engine was the equivalent of the reason of the Divine Creator:"He must have
known and foreseen all, even the remotest consequences of every one of those laws, to
have penetratedbut a little way into one of which has exhaustedthe intellect of our whole
species." Miracles were not deviations from divine laws but, rather,the result of laws not
yet known to exist. Citing the authorityof the French analyst Laplace, Babbage argued
-, Babbage,Ninth BridgewaterTreatise,pp. 9-11; and Charles Lyell to Babbage, May 1832, in K. Lyell, ed.,
Life, Letters,and Journals of Sir CharlesLyell,2 vols. (London, 1881), Vol. 2, pp. 9-10.

that a being possessed of unboundedknowledge of mathematicalanalysis would, for ex-

ample, be able to trace clearly each atom of the earth's atmosphere;it could "distinctly
foresee and might absolutelypredictfor any, even the remotestperiodof time, the circum-
stances and futurehistory of every particleof that atmosphere."58
In 1823, while deliberatingover Babbage's requestfor governmentfinancefor the Dif-
ference Engine, the First Lord of the Treasury,Robert Peel, wryly reflected that if the
engine could "calculatewhat Mr Babbage says it can, [it] may be employed in the destruc-
tion of Hume." Creative interferencewas not an act of divine interventionbut simply a
gear change. Babbage's argumentshould be seen as having implicationslike those of the
radical anatomistsof the same period that AdrianDesmond has described.Like the ana-
lyticals, these anatomistsbelieved that natureworked accordingto preexistinglaws. The
blueprintof animal and humanlife was based on a set of morphologicallaws; it was not
the work of an active, caringdesigner.With the removalof an interveningGod and a shift
of faith inward and toward materiallaws, the traditionalsocial and scientific landscape
was being prised open and challenged.59
Memory and foresight were also intrinsic components of Herschel's theory of matter
and thought. In his unpublishedmanuscript"Cause and Effect," Herschel sought to find
the equivalent in the mind of motion in the physical world: "Surely,"he wrote, "there
must be something in our minds which retains (or retards)action on the instantof occa-
sion." Further,"is it not in the natureof will to endure and wait for occasion and is it not,
in this view the equivalentin mind, to momentumin matter?and is not motivethe power
which acts on mind to createwill in it-to increaseor diminishthe intensityof such will-
to change its direction-in short to do to it with analogy to what force does to matter?"
Herschel was seeking a way to view the mind over time, as astronomersobserve and
account for the movement of the heavens or engineers view the movement of a machine.
Why, he continued,
at a sudden moment does change arise? If it be conceivable for a 1/1000 of a second it is so

for 1000 years-Then if change comes at the approvedtime, it must be in virtue of some kind
of memory in the recipientof what took place 1000 years ago-(for ex-hypothesis no internal
changes aregoing on). But simple memorydoes not (as we are conscious) produceany event-
As thinkingbeings we are conscious that simple recollection of an ordersince yesterdayis not
enough to determineus to excite it today, still less to force on the execution in defence of all
lapse of time and circumstance.60
To understandthese remarksfully we need to look more closely at Herschel's theory

of the mind. Herschelwas desperatelytrying to accountfor the actualprocess thatcaused
human action. First, he argued, "we are all conscious of will as a cause of effort"and,
second, of "motiveas a cause of will: motive may be continualactionby memory,as force
may continue its action on matter."Herschel now slightly amendedhis argumentby sug-
gesting that the word "intentionmay better be appropriatedto this enduring effect of
motive, using will for the mental and which immediatelyprecedes effort, and which orig-
inates where occasion ministersto intention."He then addedthe mechanism:"Now as we
58 Babbage,Passages from the Life of a Philosopher(cit. n. 8), pp. 390-391; and Babbage,NinthBridgewater
Treatise,pp. 15, 29, 36.

59For Peel's remarksee The CrokerPapers: The Correspondenceand Diaries of the Late Right Hon. John
Wilson Croker,ed. Louis J. Jennings, 3 vols. (London, 1884), Vol. 1, p. 263. See also Desmond, Politics of
Evolution(cit. n. 14), p. 147.
60 John Herschel, "Cause and Effect," 27 Feb. 1842, Herschel Papers,Ransom Center.

have a direct personal consciousness of the simple enduranceof intention, may we not
first regardit as a carrierof motive over time even as motion is a carrierof force over
both space and time."61This argumentcan be representedschematicallyas follows:
1. Mental (Motive)--Memory X Time = Physical (Force)--Matter X Time

-Action-4 -Movement-->
2. Intention-*Will-->Effort
3. Intention(carryingMotive) = Motion (carryingForce)
-Time-- -Time --
For Herschel and Babbage, understandingand exercising the operationsof the intelli-
gence throughalgebraicanalysisboth improvedand speededaccess to the mind's memory.
This, in turn, aided the path to invention. Herschel and Babbage believed that the manu-
facturingchanges that had taken place at the vanguardof British industrycould also be
applied to intellectualoutput.The objective was efficient mental productionthroughthe
economical use of time and the effective disciplining of the process of intellectuallabor.
This was succinctly spelled out in the Memoirsof the AnalyticalSociety:
Werean Analyticaloperationof any complexityconvertedinto commonlanguage,in all its

detail,themind,afteracquiring a clearconceptionof onepartof therelatedideas,mustsuspend
its decisionuntilit couldobtainanequallyperspicuous oneof theremainder of theproposition;
and in so long an intervalas this mustoccupy,the impressionof the formerideas would
necessarilyhavefadedin somedegreefromthe memory,unlessfixedby an expenseof time
andattention,sufficientto deteranyone fromthe employment of suchmeansof discovery.It
is thespiritof thissymboliclanguage,by thatmechanical tact,(so muchin unisonwithall our
faculties,)whichcarriestheeye atoneglancethroughthemostintricatemodifications of quan-
tity, to condensepagesinto lines, andvolumesinto pages;shorteningthe roadto discovery,
andpreserving themindunfatigued by continuedeffortsof alteration,
andpreservingthemind
unfatigued by continuedeffortsof attention
to theminorparts,thatit mayexertits wholevigour
on thosewhicharemoreimportant.62
An algebraiclanguagewas precise, economical, and efficient in the storageandproduction

of knowledge. In short, as this essay has sought to show, it providedthe means to indus-
trialize the humanmind.
61 Ibid.
62 Herschel and Babbage, Memoirsof the Analytical Society (cit. n. 18), pp. i-ii. See also Ashworth,"Calcu-
lating Eye" (cit. n. 3).


Ashworth-Memory, Efficiency, and Symbolic Analysis - Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and The Industrial Mind

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Ashworth-Memory, Efficiency, and Symbolic Analysis - Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and The Industrial Mind

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Memory, Efficiency, and Symbolic Analysis: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and the

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CharlesBabbage, John Herschel, and the

THIS ESSAY EXAMINES THE ATTEMPTof John Herschel and CharlesBabbageto

* Departmentof Economic and Social History, University of Liverpool, 11 AbercrombySquare, Liverpool

Isis, 1996, 87: 629-653

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2Ibid., 22 Aug. 1809, 17 July 1810.

14:385-405, on p. 402; and E. S. Caley, On CommercialEconomy,in Six Essays: Viz.,Machinery,Accumulation

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CAMBRIDGE IN THE 1810S

By the nineteenthcenturythe actualworkingsof the mind, for certainmen of science, had

Philosophy of Manufactures(London, 1835); Peter Barlow, A Treatise on the Manufacturesand Machineryof

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inward-emphasizing the innatehumanability to invent and create-seriously challenged

'0 Harvey W. Becher, "WilliamWhewell and CambridgeMathematics,"Studies in History and Philosophyof

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The analyticals' emphasis on notationultimatelyrepresentsa quest to find the essence of

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Herschel and Babbage were seeking to rearrangethe social order in accordancewith

It was the way Frenchanalysisprovidedthe means to industrializethe mindthatworried

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The analyticals can be termed "intellectualindustrialists":they viewed knowledge as

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abandonmentof ancient methods as comparativelyinefficientand uneconomical."24 Some

THE SCOTTISH AND FRENCH CONNECTIONS

Ranged against Herschel's "new practice"and the commercial values of a rationalDis-

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The Scottish philosopherWilliam Hamiltonlater wrote that Robison

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In short, the actual operationsof algebrarepresentedthe correctand most efficient mode

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ALGEBRAIC MYSTERIES AND THE POLITICS OF SYMBOLS

Paine, Age of Reason, Pt. 1 (cit. n. 11), p. 302.

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if we think that any accession of distinctnessis here to be gained by graphicalrepresentation,

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WILLIAM WHEW7ELL'SOPPOSITION TO PURE ANALYSIS

In 1815, after a brief and unhappyspell readinglaw, Herschel returnedto Cambridgeas

The Cambridgeestablishmentwas furious when George Peacock, a formermemberof the

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It appearsas if their [Frenchmathematicians']attachmentto the forms and processes of pure

Whewell's treatise introducedContinentalanalysis into the CambridgeTripos but fully

47 William Whewell, An ElementaryTreatiseon Mechanics, Vol. 1 (Cambridge,1819), p. vi; and Herschelto

Whewell, 1 Dec. 1819, Whewell Papers,TrinityCollege, Cambridge(hereaftercited as Whewell Papers). The

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A decade later the Cambridgemathematicianand astronomerroyal, George Airy, at-

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Whatmost provokesme is to hearthe prateof its defenders[Scottishphilosophy]& its opposers

MEMORY AND FORESIGHT

For Herschel and Babbagethe faculties of perceptionand discriminationwere mechanical

This was accomplishedin the building of the Difference Engine No. 1.

53 Hugh James Rose to Whewell, 5 Oct. 1822, Whewell Papers.

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Figure 2. Thought,Matter,and Babbage.A drawingby WilliamJ. Ashworth(December 1994).

changed-at 100,010,002-from an arithmeticalchange of 1 at every operationto a series

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