Preface

The present publication is an essay that was sent in (December, 1887) to compete for the Smith’s Prizes at Cambridge.

To the onlooker it is always a mournful thing to see what he considers splendid abilities or opportunities wasted for lack of knowledge of some paltry common-place truth. Such is in the main my feeling when considering the neglect of the study of Quaternions by that wonderful corporation the University of Cambridge. To the alumnus she is apt to appear as the leader in all branches of Mathematics. To the outsider she appears rather as the leader in Applied Mathematics and as a ready welcomer of other branches.

If Quaternions were simply a branch of Pure Mathematics we could understand why the study of them was almost confined to the University which gave birth to them, but as the truth is quite otherwise it is hard to shew good reason why they have not struck root also in Cambridge. The prophet on whom Hamilton’s mantle has fallen is more than a mathematician and more than a natural philosopher—he is both, and it is to be noted also that he is a Cambridge man. He has preached in season and out of season (if that were possible) that Quaternions are especially useful in Physical applications. Why then has his Alma Mater turned a deaf ear? I cannot believe that she is in her dotage and has lost her hearing. The problem is beyond me and I give it up.

But I wish to add my little efforts to Prof. Tait’s powerful advocacy to bring about another state of affairs. Cambridge is the prepared ground on which if anywhere the study of the Physical applications of Quaternions ought to flourish.

When I sent in the essay I had a faint misgiving that perchance there was not a single man in Cambridge who could understand it without much labour—and yet it is a straightforward application of Hamilton’s principles. I cannot say what transformation scene has taken place in the five years that have elapsed, but an encouraging fact is that one professor at any rate has been imported from Dublin.

There is no lack in Cambridge of the cultivation of Quaternions as an algebra, but this cultivation is not Hamiltonian, though an evidence of the great fecundity of Hamilton’s work. Hamilton looked upon Quaternions as a geometrical method, and it is in this respect that he has as yet failed to find worthy followers resident in Cambridge. [The chapter contributed by Prof. Cayley to Prof. Tait’s 3rd ed. of ‘Quaternions’ deals with quite a different subject from the rest of the treatise, a subject that deserves a distinctive name, say, Cayleyan Quaternions.]

I have delayed for a considerable time the present publication in order at the last if possible to make it more effective. I have waited till I could by a more striking example than any in the essay shew the immense utility of Quaternions in the regions in which I believe them to be especially powerful. This I believe has been done in the ‘Phil. Trans.’ 1892, p. 685. Certainly on two occasions copious extracts have been published, viz. in the P. R. S. E., 1890–1, p. 98, and in the ‘Phil. Mag.’ June 1892, p. 477, but the reasons are simple. The first was published after the subject of the ‘Phil. Trans.’ paper had been considered sufficiently to afford clear daylight ahead in that direction, and the second after that paper had actually been despatched for publication.

At the time of writing the essay I possessed little more than faith in the potentiality of Quaternions, and I felt that something more than faith was needed to convince scientists. It was thought that rather than publish in driblets it were better to wait for a more copious shower on the principle that a well-directed heavy blow is more effective than a long-continued series of little pushes.

Perhaps more harm has been done than by any other cause to the study of Quaternions in their Physical applications by a silly superstition with which the nurses of Cambridge are wont to frighten their too timorous charges. This is the belief that the subject of Quaternions is difficult. It is difficult in one sense and in no other, in that sense in which the subject of analytical conics is difficult to the schoolboy, in the sense in which every subject is difficult whose fundamental ideas and methods are different from any the student has hitherto been introduced to. The only way to convince the nurses that Quaternions form a healthy diet for the young mathematician is to prove to them that they will “pay” in the first part of the Tripos. Of course this is an impossible task while the only questions set in the Tripos on the subject are in the second part and average one in two years. [This solitary biennial question is rarely if ever anything but an exercise in algebra. The very form in which candidates are invited, or at any rate were in my day, to study Quaternions is an insult to the memory of Hamilton. The monstrosity “Quaternions and other non-commutative algebras” can only be parallelled by “Cartesian Geometry and other commutative algebras.” When I was in Cambridge it was currently reported that if an answer to a Mathematical Tripos question were couched in Hebrew the candidate would or would not get credit for the answer according as one or more of the examiners did or did not understand Hebrew, and that in this respect Hebrew or Quaternions were strictly analogous.]

Is it hopeless to appeal to the charges? I will try. Let me suppose that some budding Cambridge Mathematician has followed me so far. I now address myself to him. Have you ever felt a joy in Mathematics? Probably you have, but it was before your schoolmasters had found you out and resolved to fashion you into an examinee. Even now you occasionally have feelings like the dimly remembered ones. Now and then you forget that you are nerving yourself for that Juggernaut the Tripos. Let me implore you as though your soul’s salvation depended on it to let these trances run their utmost course in spite of solemn warnings from your nurse. You will in time be rewarded by a soul-thrilling dream whose subject is the Universe and whose organ to look upon the Universe withal is the sense called Quaternions. Steep yourself in the delirious pleasures. When you wake you will have forgotten the Tripos and in the fulness of time will develop into a financial wreck, but in possession of the memory of that heaven-sent dream you will be a far happier and richer man than the millionest millionaire.

To pass to earth—from the few papers I have published it will be evident that the subject treated of here is one I have very much at heart, and I think that the publication of the essay is likely to conduce to an acceptance of the view that it is now the duty of mathematical physicists to study Quaternions seriously. I have been told by more than one of the few who have read some of my papers that they prove rather stiff reading. The reasons for this are not in the papers I believe but in matters which have already been indicated. Now the present essay reproduces the order in which the subject was developed in my own mind. The less complete treatment of a subject, especially if more diffuse, is often easier to follow than the finished product. It is therefore probable that the present essay is likely to prove more easy reading than my other papers.

Moreover I wish it to be studied by a class of readers who are not in the habit of consulting the proceedings, &c., of learned societies. I want the slaves of examination to be arrested and to read, for it is apparently to the rising generation that we must look to wipe off the blot from the escutcheon of Cambridge.

And now as to the essay itself. But one real alteration has been made. A passage has been suppressed in which were made uncomplimentary remarks concerning a certain author for what the writer regards as his abuse of Quaternion methods. The author in question would no doubt have been perfectly well able to take care of himself, so that perhaps there was no very good reason for suppressing the passage as it still represents my convictions, but I did not want a side issue to be raised that would serve to distract attention from the main one. To bring the notation into harmony with my later papers dν and  which occur in the manuscript have been changed throughout to dΣ and Δ respectively. To facilitate printing the solidus has been freely introduced and the vinculum abjured. Mere slips of the pen have been corrected. A formal prefatory note required by the conditions of competition has been omitted. The Table of Contents was not prefixed to the original essay. It consists of little more than a collection of the headings scattered through the essay. Several notes have been added, all indicated by square brackets and the date (1892 or 1893). Otherwise the essay remains absolutely unaltered. The name originally given to the essay is at the head of p. 1 below. The name on the title-page is adopted to prevent confusion of the essay with the ‘Phil. Mag.’, paper referred to above. What in the peculiar calligraphy of the manuscript was meant for the familiar ()dς has been consistently rendered by the printer as ()d𝔰. As the mental operation of substituting the former for the latter is not laborious I have not thought it necessary to make the requisite extensive alterations in the proofs.

I wish here to express my great indebtedness to Prof. Tait, not only for having through his published works given me such knowledge of Quaternions as I possess but for giving me private encouragement at a time I sorely needed it. There was a time when I felt tempted to throw my convictions to the winds and follow the line of least resistance. To break down the solid and well-nigh universal scepticism as to the utility of Quaternions in Physics seemed too much like casting one’s pearls—at least like crying in the wilderness.

But though I recognise that I am fighting under Prof. Tait’s banner, yet, as every subaltern could have conducted a campaign better than his general, so in some details I feel compelled to differ from Professor Tait. Some two or three years ago he was good enough to read the present essay. He somewhat severely criticised certain points but did not convince me on all.

Among other things he pointed out that I sprung on the unsuspicious reader without due warning and explanation what may be considered as a peculiarity in symbolisation. I take this opportunity therefore of remedying the omission. In Quaternions on account of the non-commutative nature of multiplication we have not the same unlimited choice of order of the terms in a product as we have in ordinary algebra, and the same is true of certain quaternion operators. It is thus inconvenient in many cases to use the familiar method of indicating the connection between an operator and its operand by placing the former immediately before the latter. Another method is adopted. With this other method the operator may be separated from the operand, but it seems that there has been a tacit convention among users of this method that the separated operator is still to be restricted to precedence of the operand. There is of course nothing in the nature of things why this should be so, though its violation may seem a trifle strange at first, just as the tyro in Latin is puzzled by the unexpected corners of a sentence in which adjectives (operators) and their nouns (operands) turn up. Indeed a Roman may be said to have anticipated in every detail the method of indicating the connection now under discussion, for he did so by the similarity of the suffixes of his operators and operands. In this essay his example is followed and therefore no restrictions except such as result from the genius of the language (the laws of Quaternions) are placed on the relative positions in a product of operators and operands. With this warning the reader ought to find no difficulty.

One of Prof. Tait’s criticisms already alluded to appears in the third edition of his ‘Quaternions.’ The process held up in § 500 of this edition as an example of “how not to do it” is contained in Section 4 below and was first given in the ‘Mess. of Math.,’ 1884. He implies that the process is a “most intensely artificial application of” Quaternions. If this were true I should consider it a perfectly legitimate criticism, but I hold that it is the exact reverse of the truth. In the course of Physical investigations certain volume integrals are found to be capable of, or by general considerations are obviously capable of transformation into surface integrals. We are led to seek for the correct expression in the latter form. Starting from this we can by a long, and in my opinion, tedious process arrive at the most general type of volume integral which is capable of transformation into a surface integral. [I may remark in passing that Prof. Tait did not however arrive at quite the most general type.] Does it follow that this is the most natural course of procedure? Certainly not, as I think. It would be the most natural course for the empiricist, but not for the scientist. When he has been introduced to one or two volume integrals capable of the transformation the natural course of the mathematician is to ask himself what is the most general volume integral of the kind. By quite elementary considerations he sees that while only such volume integrals as satisfy certain conditions are transformable into surface integrals, yet any surface integral which is continuous and applies to the complete boundary of any finite volume can be expressed as a volume integral throughout that volume. He is thus led to start from the surface integral and deduces by the briefest of processes the most general volume integral of the type required. Needless to say, when giving his demonstration he does not bare his soul in this way. He thinks rightly that any mathematician can at once divine the exact road he has followed. Where is the artificiality?

Let me in conclusion say that even now I scarcely dare state what I believe to be the proper place of Quaternions in a Physical education, for fear my statements be regarded as the uninspired babblings of a misdirected enthusiast, but I cannot refrain from saying that I look forward to the time when Quaternions will appear in every Physical text-book that assumes the knowledge of (say) elementary plane trigonometry.

I am much indebted to Mr G. H. A. Wilson of Clare College, Cambridge, for helping me in the revision of the proofs, and take this opportunity of thanking him for the time and trouble he has devoted to the work.

Alex, McAulay
University of Tasmania,
March 26, 1893.