"Algebraical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a right-angled triangle. He was ashamed, however, to fail in his undertaking, and persevered with great industry, until he had finished the first four books, acquired plane trigonometry, with the method of algebraical calculation, and made himself well acquainted with the principles of surveying. But no consideration could prevail upon him to extend his inquiries farther in this science; and he returned with double relish to his former ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Although, as a mathematician, he published but little, yet in every subject which he has treated he has opened, not only a new field lor investigation, but also a new road for the investigators to proceed by. His discovery of the simple application of the notation of indices to algebraical powers, has totally remodelled the whole science of algebra. His conception of expressing the fundamental property of curve lines and curve surfaces by equations between the co-ordinates has led to ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... opposition to this law has made it all the more a necessity. To that fact history bears perpetual testimony, and the course of events reveals it to us. Society advances from equation to equation. To the eyes of the economist, the revolutions of empires seem now like the reduction of algebraical quantities, which are inter-deducible; now like the discovery of unknown quantities, induced by the inevitable influence of time. Figures are the providence of history. Undoubtedly there are other ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... imperfect knowledge, public opinion is as likely to be erroneous as is the opinion of an individual equally uninformed. To hold otherwise is to hold that wisdom can be got by combining many ignorances. A man who knows nothing of algebra can not be assisted in the solution of an algebraic problem by calling in a neighbor who knows no more than himself, and the solution approved by the unanimous vote of ten million such men would count for nothing against that of a competent mathematician. To be entirely consistent, gentlemen enamored of public opinion should insist ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... in the entrance class, and a great mathematician. At first he was inclined to despise the teacher, setting little store by her beautiful face and fascinating smile, for on the very first day he discovered her woful mathematical inadequacy. Arithmetic was her despair. With algebraic formulae and Euclid's propositions her fine memory saved her. But with quick intuition she threw herself frankly upon the boy's generosity, and in the evenings together they, with Margaret's assistance, wrestled with the bewildering intricacies of arithmetical problems. Her open confession ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... calamities of life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of as being a good deal cut up. Nine-tenths of human existence were summed up in the single word, bore. These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;—you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... takes in the poorer classes, by its care for their welfare and the algebraic account it keeps of all their misery and needs, political economy had, of course, given to Henri Mauperin a colouring of Liberalism. It was not that he belonged to a very decided Opposition: his opinions were merely a little ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... successively on the elements in sets of three. We may, in other words, take one set of observations upon the combined time of the three elements numbered 1, 2, 3; another set upon elements 2, 3, 4; another set upon elements, 3, 4, 1, and still another upon the set 4,1, 2. By algebraic equations we may solve the values of ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... trust plank in that platform that it "did not anywhere condemn monopoly except in words." Exactly of what else could a platform consist? Does Mr. Wilson expect us to use algebraic signs? This criticism is much as if he said the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence contained nothing but words. The Progressive platform did contain words, and the words were admirably designed to express thought and meaning and purpose. Mr. Wilson says that I long ago "classified trusts ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... wise man is the man who knows that he does not know. And this disposes of Number One and Number Two, leaving only Number Three for our consideration. It took, however, a good many years and a vast amount of study and writing for Kant to thus simplify. For years he toiled with algebraic formulas and syllogistic theorems before he concluded that the best wisdom of life ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... the thermal junctions in different sections to the galvanometer makes possible a more accurate control of the temperatures in the various parts, and while the algebraic sum of the temperature differences of the parts may equal zero, it is conceivable that there may be a condition in the calorimeter when there is a considerable amount of heat passing out through the top, for example, compensated exactly by the heat which ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly the same that it may always be considered in algebraic language as a given quantity. The great law of necessity, which prevents population from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either produce or acquire, is a law so obvious and evident to our understandings that we cannot doubt it. The different modes which nature ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... has appeared in every age to be so nearly the same that it may always be considered, in algebraic language, as a given quantity. The great law of necessity which prevents population from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either produce or acquire, is a law so open to our view, so obvious and evident to our understandings, and so completely ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... origin, in precisely the same condition which it at present preserves. Of the date of this origin, however, I grieve that I can only speak with that species of indefinite definiteness which mathematicians are, at times, forced to put up with in certain algebraic formulae. The date, I may thus say, in regard to the remoteness of its antiquity, cannot be less than ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... mathematical formula. But let me see a child abused, and the red blood will rush to my head from rage. And when I look and look upon the labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown into hysterics for shame at my algebraic calculations. There is—the devil take it!—there is something incongruous, altogether illogical, but which at this time is stronger than human reason. Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this minute as though I had robbed ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... did not suspect that I was then setting myself a double task of this nature, or that many another girl, besides myself, had first begun to chase some "unknown" phantom through the intricate stages of life at the same time that she was puzzling over the hidden meaning of an algebraic equation. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... milk-white skin and high color which characterize young English women doomed sooner or later to the consumptive curse,—an appearance of health that deceives the eye. Following a sign by which Henriette, after showing me Madeleine, made me look at Jacques drawing geometrical figures and algebraic calculations on a board before the Abbe Dominis, I shivered at the sight of death hidden beneath the roses, and was thankful for the ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... represent everything. Provided that good society knows the amount of your fortune, you are classed among those figures which equal yours, and no one asks to see your credentials, because everybody knows how little they cost. In a city where social problems are solved by algebraic equations, adventurers have many chances in their favor. Even if this family were of gypsy extraction, it was so wealthy, so attractive, that fashionable society could well afford to overlook its little mysteries. But, unfortunately, the enigmatical history of the Lanty family offered a perpetual ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... True, we observe certain regularities in the way in which these phenomena occur, and the phenomenon at one place seems to be somehow dependent on some exercise of force at another place. And so we invent an ingenious theory, and fortify it all around with ponderous algebraic artillery for defense against all attack. And by persistent use of such theories we hypnotize ourselves into the belief that we are truly scientific in method, and are dealing with objective realities, and that these learned theories are something more than pretentious ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... swart disciples knit their brows O'er algebraic signs; They build their byres, they milk their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... material. Oneness of allness in quasiness. I will engage to write the formula of any novel in psycho-chemic terms, or draw its graph in psycho-mechanic terms: or write, in romantic terms, the circumstances and sequences of any chemic or electric or magnetic reaction: or express any historic event in algebraic terms—or see Boole and Jevons for economic ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... to an almost Odyssean strain, and habitually used a diction that we should be glad to buy back from desuetude at any cost. Those who look upon language only as anatomists of its structure, or who regard it as only a means of conveying abstract truth from mind to mind, as if it were so many algebraic formulae, are apt to overlook the fact that its being alive is all that gives it poetic value. We do not mean what is technically called a living language,—the contrivance, hollow as a speaking-trumpet, by which breathing and moving bipeds, even ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Condillac well observes,[9] are essential to our acquisition of knowledge; they are the medium through which one set of beings can convey the result of their experiments and observations to another; they are, in all mental processes, the algebraic signs which assist us in solving the most difficult problems. What agony does a foreigner, knowing himself to be a man of sense, appear to suffer, when, for want of language, he cannot in conversation communicate his knowledge, explain his reasons, enforce his arguments, or make ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... and emotions seem to be in all respects like our own. It is true that they are very unlike the typical civilised man of some of the older philosophers, whose every action proceeded from a nice and logical calculation of the algebraic sum of pleasures and pains to be derived from alternative lines of conduct; but we ourselves are equally unlike that purely mythical personage. The Kayan or the Iban often acts impulsively in ways which by no means conduce to further his best interests ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... to present in the clearest light each subject discussed, and to give in matter and methods the best training in algebraic analysis at ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... minutiae of racing. [Talking of that, how annoying it is—or was—when one cared about things of great moment, to take up an evening newspaper's last edition and read in large type "Official Scratchings," with a silly algebraic formula underneath about horses being withdrawn from some race, when you thought it was a bear fight in the Cabinet.] Vivie gathered from her guide that to-day would be rather a special Derby, because it did not often happen that a King-Emperor was there to see a ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... with which we think prevents us from so doing. Language, the substance of thought, is a system of metaphors with a mythic and anthropomorphic base. And to construct a purely rational philosophy it would be necessary to construct it by means of algebraic formulas or to create a new language for it, an inhuman language—that is to say, one inapt for the needs of life—as indeed Dr. Richard Avenarius, professor of philosophy at Zuerich, attempted to do in his Critique of Pure Experience (Kritik der reinen Erfahrung), ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Zola himself. Yet there is no discoverable trace of imitation in his book. He has simply taken a method which has been most successfully applied in the study of French life and applied it in studying American life, as one uses certain algebraic formulae to solve certain problems. It is perhaps the only truthful literary method of dealing with that part of society which environment and heredity hedge about like the walls of a prison. It is true that Mr. Norris now and then allows his "method" to become too prominent, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... gives way before Mr. Ricardo's law, and is eliminated; an admirable simplification, which is equal in merit and use to any of the rules which have been devised, from time to time, for the resolution of algebraic equations. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... phlegmatic temperament; or is it because the studies of the modern languages and history, the endless practising of etudes and sonatas, the stooping wearily over some delicate embroidery, is less taxing to the nervous system than Latin and Greek, and the working out of algebraic problems? I am not prepared to say. But grant that a small part of the solution can be found in this difference, there are yet other and deeper causes at work. One of them is that the young German girl, while at school, makes study her sole business. She goes to no parties, visits no balls. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... supposes the parties to the contract to be guided only by a sense of their own best interest, and not to be influenced by secondary considerations. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that many authors have endeavored to clothe the laws of Political Economy in algebraic formulae.(162) And, indeed, wherever magnitudes and the relations of magnitudes to one another are treated of, it must be possible to subject them to calculation. Herbart has shown that this is so in the case of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the highest comedy that lay behind this algebraic statement of his career; his useless patience dogging the footsteps of fortune, which presently took wings, his long tramps over the thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases as a petitioner, his attempts to win over ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... the final tragedy, residence in China forces upon one the realization that Asia is, after all, a large figure in the future reckoning of history. Asia is really here after all. It is not simply a symbol in western algebraic balances of trade. And in the future, so to speak, it is going to be even more here, with its awakened national consciousness of about half the ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... accomplishes with a minuteness never before essayed in any similar work. The closeness and brevity of his descriptions make it one of the dryest productions ever issued on geological science, scarcely omitting the work of Humboldt, in which he sought to represent the whole of geology by algebraic symbols. Percival's work actually demands, and would richly repay, a translation into the vernacular of descriptive geology,—the language and mode of illustration employed by Murchison and Hitchcock. In its present form, it is safe to say, it has never found a single reader among the persons ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... corner awhile, trying his best to get something definite out of the great array of books he found on a low shelf. Looking up and seeing Mr. Fulton's eyes on him, a twinkle in their depths, he threw down the latest collection of algebraic ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... other hand, the law holds with equal sureness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, which like fire turns everything to its own nature, so that you cannot do him any harm; but as the royal armies sent against Napoleon, when he approached, cast down their colors and from enemies became friends, so ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... signs chiefly that we give force and energy to language; and the less language has of them, it is the less expressive and persuasive. ... Artificial signs signify, but they do not express; they speak to the understanding, as algebraic characters may do, but the passions and the affections and the will hear them not: these continue dormant and inactive, till we speak to them in the language of nature, to which they are all ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... the history of mathematics are the calculations published by the weather-prophet of the Express. Arithmetic turns pale when she glances at them, and, striking her multiplication table with her algebraic knuckles, demands to know why the Express does not add a Cube-it to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... I did so and found Captain Nemo busy with calculations in which there was no shortage of X and other algebraic signs. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... conscious of them, however, in their character of things, and not of mere signs, is evident from the fact that our whole process of reasoning is carried on by predicating of them the properties of things. In resolving an algebraic equation, by what rules do we proceed? By applying at each step to a, b, and x, the proposition that equals added to equals make equals; that equals taken from equals leave equals; and other propositions founded on these two. These are not properties ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... handsome, good-looking, plain or ugly; the mother may be beautiful, pretty, plain or ugly. Any of these types of fathers may be paired with any of these types of mothers, which makes sixteen complications. Then there is complexion—fair or dark—which makes sixty-four, for you know how, by algebraic calculations, every new possibility multiplies into all the others. If one turns to mental and moral characteristics, one's brain swims to think of the new complications incalculably numerous and all ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... and finally both hands, are to be treated. Kullak furthermore writes: "Or, if one will, he may also betake himself in fancy to a still, green, dusky forest, and listen in profound solitude to the mysterious rustling and whispering of the foliage. What, indeed, despite the algebraic character of the tone-language, may not a lively fancy conjure out of, or, rather, into, this etude! But one thing is to be held fast: it is to be played in that Chopin-like whisper of which, among others, Mendelssohn also affirmed that for him nothing more enchanting ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... and quantitative relations. The conception of quantity, therefore, if rigorously analyzed, will indicate a priori the natural and impassable boundaries of the science; while a subsequent examination of the quantities called infinite in the mathematical sense, and of the algebraic symbol of infinity, will be seen to verify the results of this ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... be said to hang down its head. Lady Cashel was, in every sense of the words, continually wrapped up in wools and worsteds. The earl was always equally ponderous, and the specific gravity of Lady Selina could not be calculated. It was beyond the power of figures, even in algebraic denominations, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... feel that the evidence presented to him is bewildering, indecisive, and obscure; and it may occur to him that the author is very like an individual who proposes to determine the value of two or three unknown quantities from one simple algebraic equation. His principal witness, Aristides, were he now living and brought up in presence of a jury, would find himself in rather an odd predicament. He is expected to settle the date of the death of Polycarp, and yet ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... in a recent number of Macmillan's Magazine, here Mr. Morris seems to us to be in complete accord, not merely with the spirit of Homer, but with the spirit of all early poetry. It is quite true that language is apt to degenerate into a system of almost algebraic symbols, and the modern city-man who takes a ticket for Blackfriars Bridge, naturally never thinks of the Dominican monks who once had their monastery by Thames-side, and after whom the spot is named. But in earlier times it was not so. Men were then ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... sofa. This logic is extremely simple, inasmuch as it consists in never expressing but one idea, that which contains the expression of their will. Like everything pertaining to female nature, this system may be resolved into two algebraic terms—Yes: no. There are also certain little movements of the head which mean so much that they may take the ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... Richard Scarsmere, who, when at school hated geography as bitterly as I did algebraic problems, should even now, while just out of my teens, be thus enabled to write down this record of a perilous journey through a land known only by name to geographers, a vast region wherein no stranger ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... facts,—that the Power which the universe manifests is utterly inscrutable." (p. 46). "The ultimate of ultimates is Force." "Matter and motion, as we know them, are differently conditioned manifestations of force." "If, to use an algebraic illustration, we represent Matter, Motion, and Force, by the symbols x, y, z; then we may ascertain the values of x and y in terms of z, but the value of z can never be found; z is the unknown quantity, ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... its religious system in order to compensate for the losses and horrors of the failure. For a vicious circle, its mathematical completeness approached perfection. The dynamic law of attraction and reaction needed only a Newton to fix it in algebraic form. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... teach her the newest theories in dogmatic theology and metaphysics, together with the whole system of Algebraic Equations if the girl ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... free to confess myself a sinner. Yet, I still don't know what sin is, or what is the way of salvation either for myself or for my pupils. I grope around all the while trying to find this way. At times, I think they may find salvation while they are finding the value of x in an algebraic equation, and possibly this is true. I cannot tell. If they fail to find the value of x, I fall to wondering whether they have sinned or the teacher that ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... a story by the great American romancer, which is a masterpiece. Who has not read the "Gold Bug?" In this novel a cryptogram, composed of ciphers, letters, algebraic signs, asterisks, full-stops, and commas, is submitted to a truly mathematical analysis, and is deciphered under extraordinary conditions, which the admirers of that strange genius can never forget. On the ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... view of the subject. They institute a rigorous comparison between shutting and not shutting. True, they are not taught to do so, any more than Frenchmen are taught to make gestures. It is in them. They are born with a natural proneness to consider, as if it were a question of algebraic quantities, whether the satisfaction they might impart by shutting the door would not be more than counterbalanced by the dissatisfaction that might accrue from distinctly and unmistakably shutting it. Still, it seems strange how any displeasure could be incurred by the performance ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... P.M. We have a list, well attested, of every successive hour between these limits having been the known established hour for the royal dinner-table within the last three hundred and fifty years. Time, therefore, vanishes from the equation: it is a quantity as regularly exterminated as in any algebraic problem. The true elements of the idea, are evidently these:—1. That dinner is that meal, no matter when taken, which is the principal meal; i.e. the meal on which the day's support is thrown. 2. That it is the meal of hospitality. 3. That it is the meal (with ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... table post, and then there was nothing heard but the scratching of the tutor's pen. But Mike's restlessness increased: he fidgeted and shuffled about in his chair, shook the table, and tried all kinds of positions to help him in solving his algebraic problem, but without avail. Scrub oaks, ravens and red-legged choughs danced before his eyes; great dark holes opened in the rocks, and the desire to finish work, get out in the bright sunshine, and run and shout, seemed ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... the dining-hall which grew into a roar as the door closed. The boys, who had sat down to breakfast rather wanting in appetite—from the fact that their consciences were not very clear regarding studies in English and French or certain algebraic solutions or arrangements in angles specified by "A B C" and "D E F," according to the declarations of a well-known gentleman named Euclid—felt in their great relief as if they would like another cup of coffee and two slices more, for ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... commonly used to indicate the algebraic sum (i.e. the difference between the sum of the minus quantities and ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... work in mathematics and physics I can speak with more confidence. He is the author of the Cartesian system of algebraic or analytic geometry, which has been so powerful an engine of research, far easier to wield than the old synthetic geometry. Without it Newton could never have written the Principia, or made his greatest discoveries. He might indeed have invented it for himself, but ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... circumstances or with the gradual increase of information and intelligence the traditional may undergo slight modifications which scarcely rank as conscious departures from what has been passively accepted. The algebraic sum of such departures may, with the lapse of time, come to be by no means insignificant, yet no individual may have exercised in any considerable degree conscious reflection or shown in any large measure ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... it was impossible to effect the required solution by the geometrical mode of reasoning employed by Newton. The problem, as it presented itself to their minds, was to find algebraic expressions for the positions of the planets at any time. The latitude, longitude, and radius-vector of each planet are constantly varying, but they each have a determined value at each moment of time. They may therefore be regarded as functions of the time, and the problem ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... confined to the Essay on Antagonism. If upon receiving a writer's terms of argument in the sense—however unusual or mistaken—which he chooses they should bear, we may without further error follow his course of thought, it is as unkind as unprofitable to lose the use of his result in quarrel with its algebraic expression; and if the reader will understand by Lord Lindsay's general term "Spirit" the susceptibility of right moral emotion, and the entire subjection of the Will to Reason; and receive his term ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... chemical experiments—which when Knighton and I repeated at his father's house, 9 Hanover Square, the baronet in future blew us up to the astonishment of the baronet in praesenti, his famous father. Also, I was a diligent student in the Algebraic class of Dr. Short, afterwards the good Bishop of St. Asaph; and I have before me now a memoria technica of mine in rhyme giving the nine chief rules of trigonometry, but not easily producible ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... daughter, and why not his fair sister Jocasta, as well? We will take them a journey which shall much astonish the venerable Surd. He shall place Abscissa's digits in yours and bless you both with an algebraic formula. Jocasta shall contemplate with wonder the genius of Rivarol. But we have much to do. We must ship to St. Joseph the vast amount of material to be employed in the construction of the Tachypomp. We ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... a complex but homogeneous wave. If they have to each other a complicated ratio, such as 500:504, the air- waves will not only not coalesce, but four times in the second the through of one wave will meet the crest of the other, thus making the algebraic sum zero, and producing the sensation of a momentary stoppage of the sound. When these stoppages, or beats, as they are called, are too numerous to be heard separately, as in the interval, say, 500:547, the effect is of a disagreeable roughness of tone, and ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... gives us the formula by which Stokes made his calculation. It is a relatively simple algebraic one, but need not be repeated here. For us it suffices that with the aid of this formula, by merely measuring the actual descent of the top of a vapor cloud, Professor Thompson was able to find the volume of the drops and thence the number of particles. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... Pluton, used to rush on deck to watch her behaviour. M. Normand would give us a lecture on her lines and her displacement wave, or the degree of her rolling or her pitching. Mr. Barnes, a great big Englishman, said never a word, but pulled a slide-rule out of his pocket and mumbled algebraic formulae. The ship was commanded in first-rate style by a very efficient naval lieutenant, M. de Montaignac, who since that time has acted as ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... wheels which sometimes needed flywheels to moderate or harmonize, sometimes needed concurrent wheels to urge or aggravate their impetus—these were the powers which he had found himself summoned to calculate, to check, to support, the vast algebraic equation of government; for this he had strengthened substantially by apparent contrarieties of policy; and in a system of watch-work so exquisite as to vary its fine balances eternally, eternally he had consulted by redressing the errors emergent, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... husks, or was it a banquet? Carolyn took it for the latter and lived on it for days. Little it mattered what or how much he had written: he had written, and of his own accord—as Carolyn made a point of from the first. There is an algebraic formula expressive of the truth that "1" is an infinitely greater number of times than "0." And a single small taper is infinitely greater in point of light and cheer than none at all. Carolyn's little world underwent illumination, and she with it. She promptly ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... good rank, who will be much heard of afterwards; Commandant in Dingelfingen is a Brigadier du Chatelet, Marquis du Chatelet-Lamont; whom—after search (in the interest of some idle readers)—I discover to be no other than the Husband of a certain Algebraic Lady! Identity made out, mark what a pass he is at. Count Daun comes on in a tempest of furious fire; 'very heavy,' they say, from great guns and small; till close upon the place, when he summons Du Chatelet: 'No;' and thereupon attempts scalade. Cannot scalade, Du Chatelet and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... during their eclipse. Everything is based on the focal plan, and on the rotation of the octagon drum, formed of eight wide simple lenses in range, having above and below it two series of dioptric rings; an algebraic gear, secured from the effects of the beating of winds and waves by glass a millimetre thick[6], yet sometimes broken by the sea-eagles, which dash themselves like great moths against these gigantic lanterns. The building which encloses and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Hundred Children Selected," "Speaking of Automobiles," "The Unusual Thing," "The High Cost of Learning," and "Wanted—A Funeral of Algebraic Phraseology;" also, some verse, "The Twentieth Regiment Knight" and "Back to God's Country" are magazine work that never came back. School Science & Mathematics, a magazine to which she contributes and of which she is an associate editor, gives hers as the only woman's ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... greatness! What strange bird may that be? Is it the ornithorynchus paradoxus? Mr. Schlosser was not wide awake there. The reference is evidently to Kant's essay upon the advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraic idea of negative quantities. It is one of Kant's grandest gleams into hidden truth. Were it only for the merits of this most masterly essay in reconstituting the algebraic meaning of a negative quantity [so generally misunderstood ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... an inheritance from boyhood. It carried me across Caesar's bridge, and through Virgil and Horace. I am indebted to it for a tolerable understanding of grammar, arithmetic, geography, and other occult sciences. It enlightened me not a little upon many algebraic processes, which, to speak truth, presented, otherwise, but slender claims to my consideration. It disciplined me into a uniform propriety of manners, and instilled into my bosom early rudiments of wisdom, and principles of virtue. In ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... in our acquaintance—a look which I may call an absolute concatenation of inductive and deductive ratiocination—from which all that was human, tender, or sympathetic was absolutely discharged. He was simply an icy algebraic symbol! Indeed, his whole being was concentrated to that extent that his clothes fitted loosely, and his head was absolutely so much reduced in size by his mental compression that his hat tipped back from his forehead and literally ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... a geometer is perhaps better understood from the assertion made respecting him by a modern mathematician, that he came as near to the discovery of the Differential Calculus as can be done without the aid of algebraic transformations. Among the special problems he treated of may be mentioned the quadrature of the circle, his determination of the ratio of the circumference to the diameter being between: 3.1428 and 3.1408, the true value, as is now known, being 3.1416 nearly. He also ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... personifications respectively of the conscience, the reason, the imagination and the senses. Without going so far as this, it is possible to see in these and in Hawthorne's other creations something typical and representative. He uses his characters like algebraic symbols to work {467} out certain problems with: they are rather more and yet rather less than flesh and blood individuals. The stories in Twice Told Tales and in the second collection, Mosses ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... to PROVE all this by his interpretation of the Book of Revelation; by labored calculations based upon arithmetical principles, and algebraic formulae until then unknown, but which appeared mystical and appalling from the fact that they were incomprehensible. The book was written in a style well calculated to perplex, astonish, or terrify the readers, especially those who were not well stocked with intelligence. It is ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Cardan, the Italian scholar and physician, the father of algebraic science (you all recollect Cardan's rule,) believer in dreams, prognostics, astrology; who died, too, miserably enough, in ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Story requires the most complex plot of any type of short story, for its interest depends solely upon the solution of the mystery presented in that plot. It arouses in the human mind much the same interest as an algebraic problem, which it greatly resembles. Poe wrote the first, and probably the best, one in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue;" his "The Mystery of Marie Roget" and "The Gold Bug" are other excellent examples. ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... admission, that "the historical development of the abstract portion of mathematical science has, since the time of Descartes, been for the most part determined by that of the concrete." Further on we read respecting algebraic functions that "most functions were concrete in their origin—even those which are at present the most purely abstract; and the ancients discovered only through geometrical definitions elementary algebraic properties of functions to which a numerical value was not attached ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... for that meaning of the mind which is behind the meaning of the words. It has sometimes seemed to me that in England there was a growing tendency to curtail language into a mere convenience, and to defecate it of all emotion as thoroughly as algebraic signs. This has arisen, no doubt, in part from that healthy national contempt of humbug which is characteristic of Englishmen, in part from that sensitiveness to the ludicrous which makes them so shy of expressing feeling, but in part also, it is to be feared, from a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... pardon? This is the Unitarian's plea: "I believe," he says, "that God is merciful; and I repose in his kindness, and trust he will have compassion on me." Alas, my friends! it was bad enough that Mr. Porter should have yesterday adopted the algebraic principle of neutralizing one text of scripture by another; but to carry up this principle to a contemplation of the character of God, and to bring it into collision with the attributes of Jehovah, and thus to set his mercy against his justice—his ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... it is evident that in order to deposit copper from a normal solution of copper sulphate a minimum potential equal to the algebraic sum of the deposition-potentials of copper ions and sulphate ions must be applied, that is, 1.56 volts. The deposition of zinc from a solution of zinc sulphate would require 2.67 volts, but, since the deposition of hydrogen from sulphuric acid solution requires only 1.90 ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... algebraic problems Jose saw the working of a rule infinite in its adaptation. She knew not what the answers should be, yet she took up each problem with supreme confidence, knowing that she possessed and rightly understood the rule for correctly solving ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... three-legged stool uncushioned, he Sits glowering through his goggles painfully, Nagging his brain with all a grinder's might Till one sounds on the drowsy ear of night. Like Sibyl's leaves the papers strew his floor Wrought-out examples, 'wrinkles' by the score, Conundrums algebraic, 'tips' on Conics And thorny 'props' remembered by mnemonics. Betweenwhiles as the slow time lagging goes, He takes the spectacles from off his nose, Removes the damper from his aching head, Pours out the coffee, cuts a slice of bread, Sips wistfully the liquid from his cup: The zeal to pass ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... sing of hope to the agonised criminal; whisper courage, brother, courage, at the ghastly deathbed, and strike down the infidel with the lance of evidence and the shield of reason!' In a pecuniary point of view I am confident, nay, the calculations may be established as irresistibly as an algebraic equation, that I can realise, as incumbent of Lady Whittlesea's chapel, the sum of not less than one thousand pounds per annum. Such a sum, with economy (and without it what sum were sufficient?), will enable me to provide amply for my wants, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... else do you call it, pray? Our physicists deal with it. Our mathematicians express its measurements in algebraic equations. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... hear it—there are axioms in probity, in honesty, in justice, as there are axioms in geometry; and moral truth is no more at the mercy of a vote than is algebraic truth. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... of which one of your chemists might perhaps give you the mathematical formula, and which the next century will no doubt express in a statement full of x, a, and b, mixed up with little algebraic signs, bars, and quirks that give me the colic; for the finest conceptions of mathematics do not add much to the sum total ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... them not as similar but the same. In order that a comparison may be effective either for ornament or for use, there must be, between the two acts or objects, a similarity in some points, and a dissimilarity in others. The comparison for moral or aesthetic purposes is like an algebraic equation in mathematical science; if the two sides are in all their features the same, or in all their features different, you may manipulate the signs till the sun go down, but you will obtain no useful result: it is only when they are in ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... to be too severely handled for his dulness. Though a mining engineer, nature had endowed him with little beyond the algebraic qualities necessary to the profession; a German-American, a dull birth and heredity had predestined him for that class which clothes its morality in fusty black and finds safety in following its neighbor in the cut of its clothes and conduct. As then, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... the nature of the mind, illustration and explanation must not of necessity proceed from the lower to the higher? or whether a boy is to be taught his addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, by the highest branches of algebraic analysis? Is there any better way of systematic teaching, than that of illustrating each new step, or having each new step illustrated to him by its identity in kind with the step the next below it? though it be the only mode in which this objection can be answered, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and so each furnishes something suitable for the saddened mind. Wisdom comes through understanding your alphabet properly. For instance, first there was Gilbert, and that gave us G; then came Kipling, and he gave us K; thus we get an algebraic formula, G.K., which are the initials of Chesterton, a still later arrival, and as the mind increases in despondency it sinks lower and lower down the alphabet until it comes to S, and thus we have Barn-yard ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Thus represented in algebraic formulae, it is easy to see that repetition of the materials designated a, or a and b together, is the source of unity in the period, and the third element introduced, here designated as c, has its only use in ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... six items ought in strictness also to be calculated. Then sum up all the pleasures which stand to the credit side of the account; add the pains which are the debit items, or liabilities, on the other; then take their algebraic sum, and the balance of it on the side of pleasure will be the good tendency of the act upon the whole." (Dewey and Tufts: ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... check our theories, and direct us in their application. The tendency created by the splendid conquests of modern generalization, to believe that all social questions are merged in economical science, and that the relations of men to their neighbors may be settled by algebraic equations,—the dream that the uncultured classes are prepared for a condition which appeals principally to their moral sensibilities,—the aristocratic dilettantism which attempts to restore the "good old times" by a sort of idyllic masquerading, and to grow feudal fidelity and veneration as we ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... two students were diligently at work, Sarah in the role of preceptress, hearing Amanda's French verbs, or helping to discover the perplexing value of X in an algebraic equation. Only occasionally did the thoughts of ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... this very name. Why? Its origin went back to old times; and being venerable they gloried therein; though they disclaimed its present applicability to any of their race; showing, that words are but algebraic signs, conveying no meaning except what you please. And to be called one thing, is oftentimes ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... to strut as the peacock does, the other to swarm as do ants? There are at the same time, as must be freely owned, investigations, moral no less than material, in which the nearer the words employed approach to an algebraic notation, and the less disturbed or coloured they are by any reminiscences of the ultimate grounds on which they rest, the better they are likely to fulfil the duties assigned to them; but these are exceptions. ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... squeamish delicacy about allowing the world to know the scope and meaning of her arrangements, and all her friends participated in her visions of comfort and economy. False modesty was no part of her nature—and her sentiment could be reduced to an algebraic formula—excluding the "unknown quantities" usually represented by the letters b, c, and d: meaning "bliss," "cottages," ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... know what ails me," he muttered, as he turned away. He felt as he had when puzzling over the unknown quantity in an algebraic equation. It was not until he was sitting in meeting, looking forward at Lucina's fair profile, cut in clear curves like a lily, that the ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... my friend; for bullion is the algebraic formula that represents comfort. When Black Venn ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... his solution to the readers of the Nouvelles Annales. His reasoning, which has a distinct flavor of discovery by hindsight, was that since a linkage generates a curve that can be expressed algebraically, it must follow that any algebraic curve can be generated by a suitable linkage—it was only necessary to find the suitable linkage. He then gave a neat geometric proof, suggested by Mannheim, for his ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... to those blue-stockings, and I have met many such, who, as soon as you approach them, throw at your head the name of a poet like a bomb-shell, and exhibit the wealth of their arsenal by firing a philosophical cannon, or algebraic chain shot. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and direct us in their application. The tendency created by the splendid conquests of modern generalization, to believe that all social questions are merged in economical science, and that the relations of men to their neighbors may be settled by algebraic equations—the dream that the uncultured classes are prepared for a condition which appeals principally to their moral sensibilities—the aristocractic dilettantism which attempts to restore the "good old times" ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... for she hated what she called "smells," and a place strewn with hot irons and bottles of acids, which, as she discovered, if disturbed burnt both dress and fingers. The sight also of algebraic characters pursuing each other across quires of paper, like the grotesque forces of some broken, impish army, filled her indolent mind with a wondering admiration that was akin to fear. The man, she reflected, who could ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... certain value of this ratio; it varies inversely with the refractive index (the power of the lens remaining constant). The total aberration of two or more very thin lenses in contact, being the sum of the individual aberrations, can be zero. This is also possible if the lenses have the same algebraic sign. Of thin positive lenses with n1.5, four are necessary to correct spherical aberration of the third order. These systems, however, are not of great practical importance. In most cases, two thin lenses are combined, one of which has just so strong a positive aberration ("under-correction,'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... immediate one which especially concerns us. Madame Duclos sent her daughter unattended to the museum, but she did not direct the shaft which killed her. That was the work of our friend X. Let us then make sure that we fit the right man to this algebraic symbol, and trust to her testimony ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... when young Willard was seated between two brothers—Henry and Brayton Abbott by name—engaged in solving Algebraic problems, a whispered inquiry, regarding the lesson, passed from ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... thought, his apparent lack of logic, attributed to defects of education, were in reality assumed, and will be sufficiently explained by certain events in the following history. Four sentences, precise as algebraic formulas, sufficed him usually to grasp and solve all difficulties of life and commerce: "I don't know; I cannot; I will not; I will see about it." He never said yes, or no, and never committed himself to ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... image-making names. Immediately, all the mythical material vanishes. Thus, "Selene kisses the sleeping Endymion" becomes the dry formula, "It is night." The most skilled linguists often declare themselves unable to change the pliant tongue of the imaginative age into our algebraic idioms.[60] Thought by imagery cannot remain itself and at the same time take ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... the benefit of her father, she rattled off into a spirited account of her struggles with the algebraic x and ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... or sciences for the use of which they were invented, being never heard on the lips, or employed in the writings, of any but the cultivators of these sciences, have no right to be properly called words at all. They are a kind of shorthand of the science, or algebraic notation; and will not find place in a dictionary of the language, constructed upon true principles, but rather in a technical dictionary apart by themselves. Of these, compelled by the advances of physical science, we have coined multitudes out ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... armchair, and pen in hand he began what looked very much like algebraic formula: I followed with my eyes his trembling hands, I took count of every movement. Might not some unhoped-for result come of it? I trembled, too, very unnecessarily, since the true key was in my hands, and no other would open ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... apparent heat it was with unalterable fixedness of purpose. They were of a common race. The duke was determined that she should wed Doppelkinn; she was equally determined that she should not. The gentleman with the algebraic bump may figure this ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... he was quite content to sit under the trees with Renmark and weigh the different advantages of each of the girls. He sometimes appealed to his friend, as a man with a mathematical turn of mind, possessing an education that extended far into conic sections and algebraic formulae, to balance up the lists, and give him a candid and statistical opinion as to which of the two he should favor with serious proposals. When these appeals for help were coldly received, he accused his friend of lack of sympathy with his dilemma, said that ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... upon vinous fermentation, by observing, that it furnishes us with the means of analysing sugar and every vegetable fermentable matter. We may consider the substances submitted to fermentation, and the products resulting from that operation, as forming an algebraic equation; and, by successively supposing each of the elements in this equation unknown, we can calculate their values in succession, and thus verify our experiments by calculation, and our calculation by experiment reciprocally. I have often successfully employed this ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier |
