Abstract
THE note under criticism purports to be a “proof” that the base originally used by Napier was the reciprocal of e, and not e itself. In reality, it is nothing of the sort. The arithmetical details are both unnecessary and in- sufficient for the purpose, and their insertion is unfortunately calculated to deceive many readers by obscuring the real points at issue. The same “proof” might equally well be employed to show that the original base was e instead of its reciprocal, but that the minus sign had been omitted from the logarithms of sines. If your correspondent will read any treatise on the history of mathematics, he will see an account of the train of reasoning which led Napier to the discovery of logarithms before the existence of a base or the connection between logarithms and indices had been suspected. There are doubtless many historical points connected with the discovery of logarithms that deserve closer study than they commonly receive, but the publication of a book of this kind is not likely to advance our knowledge of them. If one could be certain that all readers would take the book for what it is worth, no harm would be done. But there are, unfortunately, many people who possess a “little knowledge” (which is, of course, a “dangerous thing”) who will derive a large amount of misinformation from the interpretation they will place on the contents of the book, and this misinformation will be very difficult to eradicate.
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The Discovery of Logarithms. Nature 74, 175 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/074175a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/074175a0
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