Publisher's Synopsis
(Dedication)
To BASIL AND MARGARET
My DEAR CHILDREN,
A young monkey named Genius picked a green walnut, and bit, through a bitter rind, down into a hard shell. He then threw the walnut away, saying:
"How stupid people are! They told me walnuts are good to eat."
His grandmother, whose name was Wisdom, picked up the walnut peeled off the rind with her fingers, cracked the shell,
and shared the kernel with her grandson, saying: " Those get on best in life who do not trust to first impressions."
In some old books the story is told differently; the grandmother is called Mrs Cunning-Greed, and she eats all the kernel herself. Fables about the Cunning-Greed family are written to make children laugh. It is good for you to laugh; it makes you grow strong, and gives you the habit of understanding jokes and not being made miserable by them. But take care not to believe such fables; because, if you believe them, they give you bad dreams.
MARY EVEREST BOOLE, January 1909.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
1. From Arithmetic to Algebra
2. The Making of Algebras
3. Simultaneous Problems
4. Partial Solutions and the Provisional Elimination of Elements of Complexity
5. Mathematical Certainty and Reductio Ad Absurdum
6. The First Hebrew Algebra
7. How to Choose Our Hypotheses
8. The Limits of the Teacher*S Function
9. The Use of Sewing Cards
10. The Story of A Working Hypothesis
11. Macbeth's Mistake
12. Jacob's Ladder
13. The Great X of the World
14. Go Out Of My Class-Room
15. Square Root of -1
16. Infinity
17. From Bondage to Freedom
Appendix
