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Introductory overview

Reading
an historical
introduction
to the
philosophy of
mathematics
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an historical
introduction
to the
philosophy of
mathematics
a reader
Edited by Russell Marcus and Mark McEvoy

Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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An historical introduction to the philosophy of mathematics:
a reader/edited by Russell Marcus and Mark McEvoy.
pages cm
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ISBN 978-1-4725-2534-5 (hb) – ISBN 978-1-4725-2567-3 (pb) – ISBN 978-1-4725-2948-0 (epub)
– ISBN 978-1-4725-3291-6 (epdf) 1. Mathematics–Philosophy. 2. Philosophy–History.
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Contents

Acknowledgments xi
How to use the book xv
Introduction: Terminology and axioms xviii

Part one Ancients

Introduction to part I 3

1 Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Zeno’s paradoxes 5

Introductory overview 6
Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras on the origins of the world 17
Porphyry, Pythagorean uses of numbers 17
Kline, The Pythagoreans 18
Parmenides, The oneness of being 25
Marshall, The Eleatics: Parmenidean oneness and
Zeno’s paradoxes 26
Aristotle, On Zeno’s paradoxes 28

2 Plato 30
Introductory overview 31
The visible world and the unseen world 39
The divided line and the nature of mathematical objects 39
The forms and numbers 43
Two kinds of arithmetic 48
Knowledge is not perception 48
Knowledge is recollection 51
vi Contents

The recollection of absolute equality 58

The allegory of the cave 61
The importance of mathematical training 64

3 Aristotle 67
Introductory overview 68
Actual and potential infinity 75
Criticisms of Plato’s theory of forms 78
Argument and recollection 81
Wisdom 83
Knowledge and perception 84
Science, form, and matter 85
Mathematics and the forms 86
The argument from division and the separation of mathematics 87
Mathematics and abstraction 89
Abstraction and universality 91
Mathematical truth 92
Mathematics as a part of wisdom 93

Part two Moderns

Introduction to part II 97

4 The rationalists 99
Introductory overview 100
Descartes, Mathematics and doubt 115
Descartes, The certainty of mathematics 116
Descartes, The ontological argument for the existence of God 117
Descartes, Clear and distinct perception 119
Descartes, Analysis and synthesis 120
Descartes, Synthetic presentation of arguments 122
Leibniz, “Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas” 128
Locke, Against innate ideas 132
Leibniz, Mathematics and sense experience 140
Leibniz, In defense of innate ideas 141
Leibniz, On Locke’s definition of number 149
 Contents vii

Leibniz, On infinity 150

Leibniz, On axioms 151

5 The empiricists 156

Introductory overview 157
Locke, General terms and abstract ideas 167
Locke, Unity and numbers 171
Locke, Infinity 173
Locke, Essences of mathematical figures 176
Locke, Knowledge and proof 177
Locke, Mathematical knowledge as knowledge of ideas 180
Locke, Axioms and abstract ideas 180
Locke, Trifling propositions and mathematics 182
Berkeley, The error of abstract ideas 183
Berkeley, The mind-dependency of number 188
Berkeley, Arithmetic and the doctrine of abstract ideas 189
Berkeley, Geometry and the doctrine of abstract ideas 191
Berkeley, On infinitesimals 193
Berkeley, On the calculus of Leibniz and Newton 194
Hume, Matters of fact and relations of ideas 202
Hume, Reasoning and relations of ideas 203
Hume, Using particular terms generally 204
Hume, The imperfection of geometry 208

6 Kant 210
Introductory overview 211
The a priori in logic, mathematics, and science 223
Analytic and synthetic judgments 224
Synthetic a priori judgments 226
Intuition and pure intuition 228
Intuition and concepts 229
The transcendental schema and number 230
Geometry and empirical intuition 232
Mathematics and possible experience 234
Mathematics as reason in its dogmatic employment 236
Certainty and mathematical proof 241
viii Contents

Part three Nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Introduction to part III 245

7 Mill 247
Introductory overview 248
Mill, An inductive characterization of mathematics 257
Mill, Hypothetical theories 259
Mill, Mathematical knowledge as inductive 261
Mill, A priori knowledge as knowledge of language 262
Mill, Necessity and conceivability 264
Mill, Arithmetic 267
Mill, Defining numbers 273
Mill, Geometry as physical science 274
Frege, On Mill’s views of mathematics 276

8 Cantor’s transfinites 282

Introductory overview 283
Cantor, “On an Elementary Question in the Theory of Manifolds” 295

9 Logicism 298
Introductory overview 299
Frege, Preface to Begriffsschrift 313
Frege, Arithmatic is logic 315
Frege, Three principles 319
Frege, A rigorous ground for arithmetic 320
Frege, On the views of number of Kant and Leibniz 322
Frege, Numbers are objects 324
Frege, Characteristics of numbers 326
Frege, Mathematical objects, mental states,
and the context principle 328
Frege, Hume’s principle, Leibniz’s law, and the Caesar problem 329
Frege, The definition of number 332
Frege, Arithmetic is analytic 336
Russell, The natural numbers, Peano, and Frege 338
Russell, Frege’s definition of number 344
Letters between Russell and Frege 349
 Contents ix

10 Formalism 351
Introductory overview 352
Hilbert, “On the Infinite” 363

11 Intuitionism 376
Introductory overview 377
Heyting, “Disputation” 385
Brouwer, “Intuition and Formalism” 394

12 Conventionalism 405
Introductory overview 406
Carnap, “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” 415
Ayer, “The A Priori” 428

13 Wittgenstein 440
Introductory overview 441
Wittgenstein, From Remarks on the Foundations
of Mathematics 445

14 Gödel’s theorems 457

Introductory overview 458
Hintikka, “Gödel’s Incompleteness Proof” 461

Part four Contemporary views

Introduction to part IV 471

15 The Benacerraf problem 474

Introductory overview 475
Benacerraf, “Mathematical Truth” 487
Field, “Knowledge of Mathematical Entities” 500

16 The indispensability argument 505

Introductory overview 506
Quine, Holism and posits 519
Quine, “On What There Is” 521
Putnam, From Philosophy of Logic 533
Field, From Science without Numbers 545
x Contents

17 Benacerraf’s number puzzle and structuralism 574

Introductory overview 575
Benacerraf, “What Numbers Could Not Be” 583
Shapiro, “Mathematical Structuralism” 601

18 Modalism 613
Introductory overview 614
Putnam, “Mathematics Without Foundations” 619

19 Fictionalism 633
Introductory overview 634
Field, “Fictionalism” 637

20 Apriorism 647
Introductory overview 648
Gödel, Platonism and intuition 655
Katz, From Realistic Rationalism 656

21 Maddy’s realism 677

Introductory overview 678
Maddy, “Perception and Intuition” 683

22 Naturalism 701
Introductory overview 702
Maddy, “Three Forms of Naturalism” 707

23 Plenitudinous platonism 715

Introductory overview 716
Balaguer, “Full-Blooded Platonism” 719

24 Neo-logicism 733
Introductory overview 734
Heck, “Frege’s Theorem: An Introduction” 741

25 Experimental mathematics 760

Introductory overview 761
Baker, “Experimental Mathematics” 767

Bibliography 781
Index 803
Acknowledgments

T he editors gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Hofstra University

(in the form of a Faculty & Research Development Grant, and a Hofstra
University Presidential Research Award Program grant) and Hamilton College for
grants to pay portions of the fees for permissions to reprint material in the book.
Russell would also like to thank Hamilton College students Sean Fujimori ‘14,
for help compiling material in the early stages of the project; Deanna Cho ‘15, for
managing permissions; and students in my senior seminar at Hamilton, Knowledge,
Truth, and Mathematics, Spring 2014: Jason Driscoll ‘14, Austin Heath ‘15,
Genesis Melo ‘15, Jack Messerly ‘14, and Shaquan Philip ‘16, for their helpful
engagement and feedback.
Our editor at Bloomsbury, Colleen Coalter, has been enthusiastically supportive
throughout. We are most grateful to her, and to two anonymous reviewers for
Bloomsbury.
Our thanks to Mark Balaguer, Jonathan Bennett, Steven M. Cahn, Hartry Field,
Richard Heck, Penelope Maddy, and Stewart Shapiro for their generous assistance
and advice. Working with Jerry Katz as graduate students at CUNY inspired both of
us; we miss him.
We are grateful for permission to reprint the following copyrighted pieces; details
of the sources for each selection may be found at the beginning of the Bibliography,
at the end of the book.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders of the reprinted material.
The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified
of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this
book.

Morris Kline, “The Pythagoreans” from Mathematical Thought from Ancient to

Modern Times by Kline (1972) 3430w from pp. 28–37, 147–50. © 1972 by
Morris Kline. By permission of Oxford University Press, USA.
Descartes’s work, from John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, eds.,
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
xii Acknowledgments

Leibniz’s “Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas” is from Roger Ariew

and Daniel Garber, eds., Philosophical Essays, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989,
pp. 23–27. Reprinted by permission of Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Leibniz selections from New Essays on Human Understanding, translated by
Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, © Cambridge University Press, 1996,
reproduced with permission.
Georg Cantor, “On an Elementary Question in the Theory of Manifolds” in
W. Ewald, ed., From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of
Mathematics, vol. 2, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 923–40, is reprinted
with the generous permission of Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, owned by
their library, SUB Göttingen.
Gottlob Frege selections from The Foundations of Arithmetic © 1950, 1953, 1980
by Basil Blackwell publisher. English-language only edition first published
1980 by Basil Blackwell Limited. Northwestern University Press paperback
edition published 1980 by arrangement with Basil Blackwell Limited. All rights
reserved. Reproduced with permission of Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Gottlob Frege, “Preface to Begriffsschrift,” from Michael Beaney, ed., The Frege
Reader. Malden, MA, Blackwell, 1997. [Need final specs from Wiley]
David Hilbert, “On the Infinite,” in Benacerraf, Paul, and Hilary Putnam, eds.,
Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings, second edition, Cambridge
University Press, 1983, pp. 183–201. [need specs]
Arend Heyting, “Disputation,” was published in Intuitionism: An Introduction,
by Arend Heyting, Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1956 (1971),
pp. 1–12, Copyright North-Holland Publishing Company (1956). Reproduced
with permission of Elseiver.
L. E. J. Brouwer, “Intuition and Formalism,” was first published in the Bulletin of
the American Mathematical Society 20.2, November 1913, pp. 81–96; used by
permission of the American Mathematical Society.
Rudolph Carnap, “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology,” is Supplement A in
Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic, Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press. © 1947 and 1956 by The University of Chicago.
All rights reserved. Published 1947. Enlarged edition 1956. Paperback edition
1958. Midway reprint edition 1988. Printed in the United States of America.
A. J. Ayer, “The A Priori,” from Language, Truth and Logic, New York: Dover,
1952. Reprinted with permission from Dover Publications, Inc.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, revised edition,
pp. Part 1: Sections 3–5, 17, 33–35, 61, 113, 116–18, 143, 148–50, 156, 168;
Part 3: Sections 16, 25–27, 39, 66–67, 82, 85, 87; Part 4: Sections 56–57; Part 5:
Sections 9, 10, 12, 14, 16; Part 6: Sections 7, 8, 16, 21, 24, 30, 38–39, 41, 46–49;
Part 7: Sections 11, 15, 29, 34–35, 43, 61, 66–67, 74 , © 1978 Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, by permission of The MIT Press.
 Acknowledgments xiii

Jaakko Hintikka, “Gödel’s Incompleteness Proof” in, On Gödel, Wadsworth, 2000.

Reproduced with permission of Cenage Learning
Paul Benacerraf, “Mathematical Truth,” Journal of Philosophy, 70.19, November
1973, 661–79. Reprinted with permission by Journal of Philosophy.
Hartry Field, “Knowledge of Mathematical Entities,” Realism, Mathematics,
and Modality, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989, pp. 25–30. Reprinted by kind
permission of Prof. Field.
W. V. Quine, “Holism and Posits” from “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” was first
published in The Philosophical Review, January 1951. The Philosophical
Review is presently published by Duke University Press. [Link].
W. V. Quine, “On What There Is” may be found In W. V. Quine, From a Logical
Point of View, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 1–19.
Hilary Putnam, from Philosophy of Logic in Mathematics, Matter, and Method:
Philosophical Papers, Vol. I, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, pp.
337–56. [Still waiting]
Hartry Field, Science Without Numbers, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1980, pp. 1–16, 20–46. Reprinted by kind permission of Prof. Field.
Paul Benacerraf, “What Numbers Could Not Be” was published in The
Philosophical Review 74.1: 47–73, January 1965. The Philosophical Review is
presently published by Duke University Press. [Link].
Stewart Shapiro, “Mathematical Structuralism,” is from The Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, [Link]/m-struct. Reprinted by kind permission of The
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Prof. Shapiro.
Hilary Putnam, “Mathematics without Foundations” was published in The Journal
of Philosophy 64.1: 5–22, January 19, 1967. Reprinted by permission of Journal
of Philosophy.
Hartry Field, “Fictionalism,” Realism, Mathematics and Modality, Blackwell, 1989,
pp. 1–14. Reprinted by kind permission of Prof. Field.
Kurt Gödel, “Platonism and Intuition” is from “What is Cantor’s Continuum
Problem?” Originally published as “What is Cantor’s Continuum Problem?,”
Kurt Gödel, The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 54, No. 9, 515–25.
Copyright 1947 The Mathematical Association of America. All Rights
Reserved.
Jerrold J. Katz, Realistic Rationalism, pp. 23–51; 177–78, © 1997 Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, by permission of The MIT Press.
Penelope Maddy, “Perception and Intuition,” pp. 47–75 from Ch. 2, sections
2 “Perception” and 3 “Intuition” from Realism in Mathematics by Maddy,
Penelope (1992). By permission of Oxford University Press.
Penelope Maddy, “Three Forms of Naturalism,” from Oxford Handbook of
Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic, edited by Shapiro (2005) 6089w from
xiv Acknowledgments

Chapter “Three Forms of Naturalism” pp. 446–59. By permission of Oxford

University Press, USA.
Mark Balaguer’s “Full-Blooded Platonism” is printed here by permission of Prof.
Balaguer.
Richard G. Heck, Jr., “Frege’s Theorem: An Introduction,” was published in
Harvard Review of Philosophy 7: 56–73, 1999 and is printed here by permission
of Prof. Heck.
Alan Baker, “Experimental Mathematics,” Erkenntnis 68: 331–44, 2008.

Russell thanks Emily, Marina, and Isidor for their patience and encouragement and
support, for keeping me grounded while I indulge my abstract ideas. Mark thanks
Stephanie, Phil, Tony, Keith, Aoife, and Jade for all sorts of support.
How to use the
book1

A n Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics is an introductory

reader and text aimed primarily at undergraduates and early graduate students.
Our goal in putting it together is to provide an overview of the main themes in the
history of the philosophy of mathematics and the background for contemporary
trends. In addition, we include a broad and accessible selection of contemporary
readings intended to provide glimpses of the current state of the discipline.
Trying to collect both historical background and contemporary views led
us, perhaps inevitably, to certain limitations on our aspirations. We were divided
between organizing the book chronologically or thematically. Settling on mainly
a chronological organization, some themes, like different views about infinity,
ended up scattered through the book. Working philosophers of mathematics may be
frustrated by the lack of depth; we would have liked to include more contemporary
readings. Working historians may find that nuances of translation have been glossed
over and that work of some of their (and our) favorite figures have been omitted. We
share such frustrations.
Still, we present what we take to be the major work of the major figures in history,
more than enough material to cover in a semester’s introduction to the philosophy
of mathematics. Such a course could focus on the history, maybe choosing a few
favorite recent readings. Or one could choose from the historical readings more
selectively and survey the contemporary scene. Russell likes to use the material
included here along with some recent papers on indispensability. Mark likes to
supplement the readings with ones on contemporary epistemology. We have taught,
using this material, various versions of a philosophy of mathematics course at various
undergraduate levels.
In addition to the source material, we have provided, for the instructor and the
student, support material for each of the twenty-four sections of the book. There

Footnotes within introductions are all from Marcus and McEvoy. Footnotes within readings are all from
1

the original author, except where noted with codes in bold. “MM” at the beginning of a note indicates our
addition; other codes indicate an earlier editor or translator.
xvi How to use the book

are introductory overview essays for each section, outlining the major themes in the
readings. At the end of each introductory overview, we have included suggestions
for further readings, lightly annotated. Some of those suggestions refer to essays in
some of the advanced readers and source books listed here, with the abbreviations
we use through the text.

Advanced readers and source books

BL Bueno, Otávio and Øystein Linnebo. New Waves in Philosophy of
Mathematics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
BP Benacerraf, Paul and Hilary Putnam, eds. Philosophy of Mathematics:
Selected Readings, second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983.
CG Cellucci, Carlo and Donald Gillies. Mathematical Reasoning and
Heuristics. King’s College, 2005.
E Ewald, William. From Kant to Hilbert. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
H Hart, W. D., ed. The Philosophy of Mathematics. Oxford, 1996.
LPP Leng, Mary, Alexander Paseau, and Michael Potter. Mathematical
Knowledge. Oxford, 2007.
MS Schirn, Matthias. The Philosophy of Mathematics Today. Oxford, 1998.
SS Shapiro, Stewart, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mathematics
and Logic. Oxford, 2007.
VH Van Heijenoort, Jean. From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in
Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1967.

We also have provided what we call Themes to Explore at the end of each Introductory
Overview. The themes to explore could be essay or research assignments, classroom
discussion questions, or extracurricular review. Responses to these prompts may be
started with the source material provided and expanded by pursuing the suggested
readings. We urge students to read these questions before doing the source readings
and to return to them after finishing.
In addition to detailed references for all of the source material and the proper
references for all of the suggested readings in the introduction, the bibliography at
the end of the book contains a list of introductory textbooks which could be used
alongside this reader.
 How to use the book xvii

A note on quotation marks and ‘platonism’

Our introductory pieces have followed the following convention regarding the use
of quotation marks: (a) double-quotation marks indicate either a quoted phrase or
a phrase that is being used in a new or extended sense; (b) single quotation marks
indicate reference to an expression, rather than what the expression refers to, or to
name a sentence, proposition, or concept. Here are two examples:

The ‘empty words’ argument is Aristotle’s claim that there need not be a one
over any many.
For ‘the cat is on the mat’ to be true, ‘the cat’ must refer to a specific cat, ‘the
mat’ must refer to a specific mat, ‘is on’ must refer to the relation of being on,
and the cat must be on the mat.

We have not imposed this convention broadly on the primary sources, preferring not
to alter too much of the original texts. Still, for certain of the historical texts, mostly
those written before the nineteenth century, we have brought the use of quotation
marks more into line with this convention. We were slightly editing some of the more
archaic language in these works or their translations, anyway, so the general precept
against altering the text seemed to us to hold less sway. So, we have Kant writing:

Let us take, for example, the proposition, ‘Everything that happens has a
cause.’ In the concept of ‘something that happens’, I indeed think an existence
which a certain time antecedes, and from this I can derive analytic judgments.
But the concept of a cause lies quite out of the above concept and indicates
something entirely different from ‘that which happens’, and is consequently
not contained in that concept.

From the nineteenth century on, as the need to edit archaic language wanes, we have
tended to leave the quotation marks as they were in the originals, except where such
punctuation is internally inconsistent within a given selection, or where the original
made no distinction between quotation marks used as in (a) and (b) above.
We ordinarily use capital-p ‘Platonism’ to refer to views ascribed (or ascribable)
to Plato. We use lower-case-p ‘platonism’ to refer to claims (roughly) that abstract
objects exist. We ordinarily defer to authors of our selections when their uses differ
from ours.
Introduction
Terminology
and axioms

Terminology
We can divide the central questions in the philosophy of mathematics, roughly, into
metaphysical questions, about the nature of the subjects of mathematical claims,
and epistemological questions, about how we acquire and justify our beliefs about
mathematics. While every philosopher has her or his own views and no two views
are exactly alike, some similarities among different views are useful to identify and
label. We use some of these labels in the introductory passages throughout the book,
and some of the terms are invoked in the primary sources, so we thought it would be
useful to characterize them briefly here.
Let’s start with the three dominant positions on the metaphysics of mathematics.
Realism or platonism is either the claim that mathematical objects like sets, numbers,
and geometric shapes exist or that mathematical claims can be non-vacuously true.
We sometimes call the former claim object realism and the latter claim sentence
realism (or propositional realism or truth-value realism). Many realists (including
Plato, Descartes, Frege, Gödel, and Quine) are both object realists and sentence
realists. Such people connect sentence and object realism because, for example, for
‘the square root of two is irrational’ to be true, it seems that there have to be objects,
numbers like the square root of two, with properties, like being irrational.
Sentence realists who deny object realism are often motivated by the supposed
spookiness of abstract mathematical objects. Mathematical objects are supposed to
be real objects, but not ones that we can see or otherwise sense. We never perceive
numbers or circles or sets, though we see names of numbers (‘6’ or ‘six’); pictures
which stand for geometric objects; and things which may be collected into sets. So
some philosophers believe that while some mathematical claims are true they do not
refer to abstract objects; these are sentence realists who are not object realists; we can
call them object nominalists.
Another option for those worried about our access to abstract objects is to adopt
both object and sentence nominalism. Nominalism (or fictionalism, or anti-realism)
 Introduction: Terminology and axioms

Introduction: Terminology and axioms xix

is the claim that numbers do not exist and that no mathematical sentences are non-
vacuously true. The term ‘nominalism’ is used because some anti-realists believe that
mathematical terms do not refer to any real thing; they are just empty names. Another
way to characterize the view is to say that the nominalist denies that there are any
types corresponding to number tokens, inscriptions like the word ‘two’.
Nominalists are often motivated by the view that knowledge comes, ultimately, from
the senses. Since mathematical objects are not the kinds of things that are available to
the senses, we don’t see or touch them, we have no good reason to believe that they
exist. The fictionalist claims that sentences like ‘the square root of two is irrational’
are, strictly speaking, false, since there are no mathematical objects. Berkeley and
Field are prominent nominalists, and we find species of anti-realism in Aristotle, who
denies that there are mathematical objects separate from the sensible world.
Among contemporary anti-platonists, those who deny the separate existence of
mathematical objects, there are revolutionaries and reinterpreters. Revolutionaries,
like the nominalists above, believe that mathematical statements are false and
that mathematical objects do not exist. Reinterpreters believe that mathematical
statements are true when reconstrued as referring to something other than
mathematical objects. For example, mathematical statements might be about our
thoughts or possible arrangements of concrete objects. For the reinterpreter, while
platonistic mathematical objects do not exist, we can understand mathematical terms
as shorthand for other kinds of objects. Among work in this book, we can think of
that by Kant, Brouwer, and the modalist Putnam as reinterpretive.
Idealism is the view that numbers are mental constructs. Idealists are often
drawn toward the objectivity of the realist interpretation of mathematical claims.
They agree that mathematical sentences can be true or false. But they also agree
with the nominalist that there is something unacceptable about positing a world
of mathematical objects unavailable to sense perception. The idealist grounds the
objectivity of mathematical claims in our thoughts about mathematics. Mathematics
is, for the idealist, about mental objects. Kant and Brouwer are idealists, and portions
of Locke’s work are also idealistic.
Again, these terms, ‘realism’, ‘fictionalism’, and ‘idealism’, are broad and the
specific views we find in each philosopher are too subtle to be reduced to simple
jargon.
In epistemology, it is typical to distinguish empiricists, those philosophers who
believe that we can account for all of our beliefs by appealing to sense experience,
from rationalists, who believe that we must have something like pure thought or
reason in order to explain or justify our beliefs. Ordinarily, philosophers like Plato,
Descartes, Leibniz, and Gödel are classified as rationalists while philosophers
like Locke, Mill, and even Aristotle are classified as empiricists. These terms are
again too broad to be especially useful; the selections from Leibniz and Locke,
for example, show that the differences between rationalists and empiricists can be
tricky to specify precisely. In contemporary philosophy, these terms often remain
in use, but are often supplanted by other terms. Quine’s empiricism is sometimes
better labeled naturalism, and Maddy embraces the latter term. Some contemporary
rationalists prefer the term apriorism, for the view that some statements are known
only a priori, or independent (in some sense) from experience.
xx Introduction: Terminology and axioms

There are many other terms for many other philosophical views about mathematics,
like formalism and conventionalism and modalism, though these tend to characterize
more narrow positions and we’ll leave discussion of them for the relevant sections
of the book.
But one more set of preliminaries might be useful. Mathematics is a broad and
varied discipline. In addition to the traditional fields of arithmetic and geometry,
mathematicians study real analysis, topology, probability, statistics, linear algebra,
set theory, category theory, knots, graphs, and other topics. Any philosophy
of mathematics must account for all of the diverse professional activities of
mathematicians. Still, many of the readings here seem to focus exclusively on sets,
numbers, or geometry.
There are several reasons for this narrow focus. For one, the variation in
mathematical sub-fields is mainly a recent development, over the last two centuries.
Also, philosophers often focus on axiomatic formulations of theories in order to
focus their questions. Further, philosophers sometimes focus primarily on the
axiomatic formulations of theories they consider most fundamental or foundational.
In remainder of this introduction, we review, briefly, some axiomatic approaches to
mathematics.

Axiomatic theories
The importance of The Elements, attributed to Euclid around 300 BCE, cannot be
underestimated. It is precedential for all future developments in mathematics and
has influenced many philosophers more generally. Euclid collected, organized, and
systematized the geometric learning of the earlier Greek classical period, carefully
noting and separating definitions, common (or logical) notions, and postulates. He
also devotes books seven through nine of the thirteen books of The Elements to
numbers and number theory, deriving many propositions from fundamental work
on ratios and proportions. The theorems in The Elements are ordered logically, with
later propositions derived strictly from earlier ones or assumptions. There were many
other ancient geometers who produced comprehensive and important mathematical
works. For example, Apollonius’s Conic Sections, written in the century following
The Elements, also collected and organized work of the Greek classical period. But
The Elements had tremendous influence. Indeed, for over two millennia, it was the
only important axiomatic theory.
As late as the seventeenth century, most philosophers and mathematicians
presumed all of mathematics to be, at root, geometric. On that view, all new
developments in mathematics could be, theoretically, derived from Euclid’s work.
For example, claims about square and cubic numbers were understood as claims
about areas of square figures or volumes of cubes.
The revolutionary development of analytic geometry, by Descartes, Fermat, and
others in the early seventeenth century, inverted the mathematical order, showing
the broader theories of algebra and analysis to be more proper foundations within
mathematics. Theories of numbers, often theories of real numbers and, more
 Introduction: Terminology and axioms xxi

generally, analysis, became seen as more fundamental than geometry, though the
relationship between the two was hotly contested.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, set theory supplanted theories of
numbers as the broadest and most unifying mathematical theory. Set theory is a
general theory of collections. We can study sets of animals or footballs or numbers.
Pure set theory is the study of sets themselves, where the sets may have other sets,
but nothing that is not a set, as elements. Originally, set theory was seen as a purely
logical theory in which any collection of anything could be a set. This naive set theory
of Cantor and Frege turned out to be inconsistent. Various alternatives, based on finer
axioms, have been developed. All numbers and their operations are definable within
these contemporary set theories. Today, some mathematicians explore an even more
abstract approach, called category theory, as potentially an even better foundation.
Whatever mathematical theory might be taken as properly foundational, a clear
apprehension of any theory is provided by a simple, elegant axiomatization. The
power of The Elements is largely found in its systematicity, in the way that the
propositions are logically ordered so you can see which theorems depend on which
other theorems, and in the way that definitions and assumptions are made explicit.
Euclid also made implicit assumptions, some of which turned out to be controversial
or even false. The axiomatic method of The Elements allowed mathematicians to see
those clearly too, at least eventually.
In the late nineteenth century, spurred largely by revolutionary work in logic and
set theory, the method of axiomatization became central to mathematics in all its
branches. Let’s look briefly at a variety of axiomatic theories.

The MIU system: A sample axiomatic system

In order to get a feel for how axiomatic systems work, consider a simple system, from
Douglas Hofstadter, called the MIU system.1 In the MIU system, any concatenation of
‘M’s, ‘I’s or ‘U’s is called a string. So, ‘MIU’, ‘UMI’, and ‘MMMUMUUUMUMMU’
are all strings.
Some strings of the MIU system are theorems. We can think of theorems as special
or successful strings. If we think of the ‘M’s, ‘I’s, or ‘U’s as words, the theorems
would correspond to grammatical sentences of English. So, ‘cat mat the on is’ is a
string of English words but not a sentence (or a theorem) while ‘the cat is on the mat’
is a sentence. We could also think of strings as all possible statements of geometry,
while theorems are only the true statements of geometry.
To determine the theorems of a system, we have to figure out which statements
are provable from the axioms we adopt. That is not generally an easy task. But
determining which strings of the MIU system are theorems is simple. Hofstadter
provides a single starting axiom, or a foundational truth, ‘MI’, and four rules from
which we can derive new theorems.

Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 33
1

et seq.
xxii Introduction: Terminology and axioms

Axioms and Theorems for Hofstadter’s MIU System

The MIU system takes only one axiom: MI.
A theorem is any string which is either an axiom, or follows from the axioms by
using some combination of the rules of inference.

Rules of Inference for Hofstadter’s MIU System

R1. If a string ends in ‘I’ you may append ‘U’ to the string.
R2. You may append whatever follows an M in a string.
R3. If ‘III’ appears in that order, then you may replace the three ‘I’s with a single ‘U’.
R4. ‘UU’ may be dropped from any theorem.

Here are some theorems of the MIU system followed by their justifications, the line
and rule from which they follow.

Sample theorems of the MIU system

Theorem Justification
1. MI Axiom
2. MIU Step 1 and Rule R1
3. MII 1, R2
4. MIIII 3, R2
5. MIU 4, R3
6. MUI 4, R3
7. MIIIIIIII 4, R2
8. MIUUI 7, R3
A derivation of any theorem, within any formal system, is collection of theorems
into a list such that each theorem is either an axiom or follows from axioms or prior
theorems in the list by the rules of inference of the system. Here is a derivation in the
MIU system of the theorem ‘MIIIII’.
1. MI Axiom
2. MII 1, R2
3. MIIII 2, R2
4. MIIIIIIII 3, R2
5. MIIIIIIIIU 4, R1
6. MIIIIIUU 5, R3
7. MIIIII 6, R4
If you would like to play with the MIU system a bit, you can try to derive the
following theorems.
T1. MIUUI
T2. MIIUIUIUIII
T3. MIIUIIIUIIUIIIU
T4. MU
The solutions are at the end of this section, pp. xxix–xxx.
 Introduction: Terminology and axioms xxiii

Modern axiomatics and logic

Let’s turn from the sample axiomatic system MIU to some more-typical axiomatic
mathematical theories. The standard approach to presenting a formal theory is first
to specify a language, including its syntax and a definition of a well-formed formula
(or wff). One presents axioms, or basic assumptions, and rules of inference which
allow one to derive theorems from the axioms. Theories of both propositional logic
and quantificational logic are naturally axiomatized. Contemporary propositional
logic derives from the logic of the Stoics. Contemporary quantificational logic
derives from Aristotle’s categorical logic and may be presented as first-order or,
more controversially, second- or higher-order. Contemporary logics follow Frege’s
unification of the two older forms, though they are often presented in forms without
axioms. Many students learn versions of logic called natural deduction systems
which use just a language, rules of inference, and a so-called semantic method for
determining when a wff is a theorem, truth tables for propositional logic, for example.
More specific mathematical theories are ordinarily presumed to be couched in the
languages of logic and thus do not, generally, include explicit rules of inference,
relying on the background logic to do the inferential work.
Perhaps the broadest and most fundamental mathematical theory is set theory. There
are a variety of competing set theories; ZF is perhaps the most standard. ZF may be
written in the language of first-order logic by adding one special predicate letter, ∈.

Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (ZF)

Substitutivity: (∀x)(∀y)(∀z)[y=z ⊃ (y ∈x ≡ z ∈x)]
Pairing: (∀x)(∀y)(∃z)(∀u)[u ∈z ≡ (u = x ∨ u = y)]
Null Set: (∃x)(∀y)∼y ∈x
Sum Set: (∀x)(∃y)(∀z)[z ∈y ≡ (∃v)(z ∈v·v ∈x)]
Power Set: (∀x)(∃y)(∀z)[z ∈y ≡ (∀u)(u ∈z ⊃ u ∈x)]
Selection: (∀x)(∃y)(∀z)[z ∈y ≡ (z ∈x·ℱ   u)]
  for any formula ℱ not containing y free.
Infinity: (∃x)(∅ ∈x·(∀y)(y ∈x ⊃ Sy ∈x)
 where ‘Sy’ stands for y ∪ {y}, the definitions for the components
of which are standard.

Most mathematicians adopt a further axiom, called Choice, yielding a theory

commonly known as ZFC. Choice says that given any set of sets, there is a set which
contains precisely one member of each of the subsets of the original set. The axiom
of choice has many equivalents, some of which are less intuitively pleasing than
simple formulations. When added to ZF, for example, Choice leads to some strange
results like the well-ordering theorem. The well-ordering theorem says that every set
can be well-ordered, including sets like that of the reals which we have utterly no
idea how to order.
It is widely accepted that all mathematical theories can be written in terms of
(maybe even reduced to) set theory. A theory can be written in terms of set theory
xxiv Introduction: Terminology and axioms

if with the relevant definitions, all the theorems of the higher-level theory can be
written with just the language of set theory, and can be proved, in principle, with
just the axioms of set theory. Set theory is thus seen as a unifying framework for
mathematics: all mathematical results can be brought together as complex set-
theoretic statements. Proofs in higher-level theories like topology or real analysis
are impossibly complicated to write in the language of set theory. But they are still
constructible in set-theoretic language, at least in principle.
Regardless of our choice of foundation, if our interests are more specific and local,
we can formulate axioms for particular mathematical theories. We can construct
axioms for number theory, or geometry, or topology, embedding those axioms in a
logical theory and perhaps other background mathematical theories. For example, to
develop topological theories we add axioms of countability and separation to other
geometric axioms.
Here is a classic formulation of number theory, called Peano arithmetic, which
was developed initially by Richard Dedekind, but often gets Peano’s name. (Peano
himself credited Dedekind.)

Peano arithmetic
P1: 0 is a number.
P2: The successor (x′) of every number (x) is a number.
P3: 0 is not the successor of any number.
P4: If x′ = y′ then x = y.
P5: If P is a property that may hold for any number, and if
i. 0 has P; and
ii. for any x, if × has P then x′ has P;
then all numbers have P.

P5 is mathematical induction, a schema of an infinite number of axioms, one for

each property P. Many alternative formulations of the Peano axioms are available.
A second-order formulation which quantifies over the properties in P5 is sometimes
seen as preferable to the first-order schema. This question of how best to understand
Peano Arithmetic is live and interesting.
The first modern axiomatization of geometry is due to Hilbert in the late nineteenth
century. Hilbert’s axiomatization is notable for its completely pure geometric form,
eschewing all number theory. In the 1930s, G. D. Birkhoff developed an alternative
and efficient axiomatization of geometry which uses real numbers.

The status of the axioms

Given the availability of simple and elegant axiomatizations of many mathematical
theories, it is natural to focus our questions about our knowledge of mathematics on
the axioms themselves. One common attitude about mathematics is that the axioms
 Introduction: Terminology and axioms xxv

are mere assumptions from which theorems follow using logic. But what is the status
of those assumptions? Are they arbitrary? Can they be true or false? Can we know
or believe them? Must the axioms be intuitively pleasing? How do we decide among
competing axiomatizations?
Such questions get to the heart of the central epistemological questions about
mathematics. If the axioms are mere arbitrary assumptions, then the theorems which
follow from them are no more grounded. On such a view, all we can say about a
mathematical theorem is that it follows from some arbitrary set of axioms. We cannot
say whether the theorem is true or false. In contrast, if we know the axioms to be true
and we know that the rules of inference preserve truth, then we can know that any
particular theorem of a system is true. But mathematical theorems and axioms often
refer to objects like sets and numbers and spaces which are not directly available to
sense perception. It seems difficult to explain how we could know statements about
them to be true or false.
We can identify at least six plausible positions regarding the axioms. First, the
axioms could be arbitrary definitions which we could accept without justification. On
this view, mathematics is just the manipulation of meaningless symbols according
to syntactically-constructed rules of inference. This view is often called formalism
or naive formalism. Naive formalism is more often attacked than defended, though
we might interpret Hume, who takes mathematical theorems to follow from the law
of non-contradiction without having any objects of its own, as holding a version of
formalism. The mathematician David Hilbert is often called a formalist though his
work combines elements of various views, as we will see.
Second, mathematical axioms could be merely logical truths. Leibniz and
Hume argue that all of mathematics is derived from definitions using the principle
of contradiction, which is a central tool in justifying our knowledge of logical
truths. Logical truths apply to everything and have no special domain of their
own. If mathematics is just logic in disguise, we might avoid positing any special
mathematical objects. Neither Hume nor Leibniz thinks that there are mathematical
objects, even though they believe that mathematical theorems are true. This second
view, that mathematical theorems are true but that mathematical terms have no
particular referents, is awkward. Consider the null set axiom: (∃x)(∀y) ∼ y ∈x. It
asserts the existence of a set. To deny that there are mathematical objects means
that we have to find a way to understand that claim without taking it at face value.
Both Hume and Leibniz are thus faced with the challenge of reinterpretation, like the
reinterpretive anti-platonists.
Third, the axioms could be justified by our reflections on our own mental states.
Locke and Kant hold variations on this position, taking mathematical objects to be
mental objects, though in different ways. Locke believes that all referring terms,
terms for material objects as well as terms for mathematical objects, refer to mental
objects. Otherwise, given our inability to know about the world beyond the veil of
ideas, our communication would concern objects of which we have no knowledge.
Kant disagrees with Hume and Leibniz that mathematical inferences are purely
deductive and argues that we construct mathematical objects in pure intuition, our
xxvi Introduction: Terminology and axioms

cognitive capacity for representation. Note that if the axioms refer to our mental
states, in either Locke’s way or Kant’s, then mathematical claims are claims about
individual psychological phenomena, not shared, public objects.
Fourth, the axioms could be justified by our intuitions about abstract mathematical
objects. Descartes holds this position, as do some twentieth-century platonists like
Gödel and Katz. Intuition is supposed to be a mental capacity for apprehending
abstract objects or propositions about abstract objects. Some philosophers believe
that any purported capacity for intuition is mystical and unscientific like ESP. Any
epistemology for mathematics which appeals to intuition thus must show itself to be
consistent with our best psychology.
Both the third and fourth positions commit us to contentious psychological
abilities, abstraction or intuition. They also commit us to contentious objects of those
processes, like abstract mathematical objects. Some philosophers, proponents of the
final two views about the axioms, hope to avoid such tendentious claims.
On our fifth view, the axioms are about concrete objects. Mill and early work
by Maddy take mathematical claims to be empirical generalizations, inductions
from sense experience. Such a view improves on the Hume-Leibniz view by giving
referents to mathematical objects without committing to contentious psychological
abilities or contentious mental or abstract objects. If we take mathematical
statements to refer to abstract objects, the proponent of this fifth view takes them to
be false; there are none. But the holder of the fifth view believes that there are true
statements, related to the ones about mathematical objects, which are about physical
objects.
Sixth, the axioms could be about possible objects, possible arrangements of
concrete objects or possible mathematical objects. There are lots of variations of this
view, which we can call, broadly, modalism. Mill explored a version of modalism, as
do Putnam and Field in contemporary philosophy.

Axioms and theorems

Largely in response to concerns about the status of the axioms, some philosophers,
including Frege and Russell, attempted to show that mathematics is all merely logic
in complicated form. This view is called logicism. With the further assumption that
our knowledge of logic is secure, the logicists sought to show that our knowledge
of mathematics is unproblematic. Supporting the logicist claim was the extended
project, most notably in Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica, of
showing how arithmetic can be written in logical language. Unfortunately for
the logicist project, while the axioms of arithmetic can be written in set theory,
the axioms of set theory cannot be written in a language that people naturally
think of as logical. Instead, logical theories must be extended to include the non-
logical particle for set inclusion and axioms, like those of ZF above, governing
that particle.
 Introduction: Terminology and axioms xxvii

While logical axioms are relatively obvious and uncontroversial, axioms of

set theory are often debated. We saw that some mathematicians accept the axiom
of choice in addition to the other axioms of ZF but that adding Choice to ZF
leads to unintuitive consequences. To evaluate the axiom of choice, we look at
the ways in which it facilitates inferences and at what theorems can be proved
with it and without it. We evaluate both the broader systems and the further
theorems, balancing a range of factors including intuitive pleasingness, strength,
and elegance. Whether or not we should accept the axiom of choice and other
mathematical axioms is thus not as easy or simple a decision as whether to accept
logical theories.
Other mathematical questions focus on the relations between theories. We can
write number theory in the language of set theory by taking certain sets of sets to stand
for numbers and certain set-theoretic operations to stand for arithmetic relations.
Does this translation of number theory into set theory show that arithmetic is reduced
to set theory? Does it show that any questions about numbers are answerable in terms
of questions about sets? Are numbers different kinds of objects than sets? Attempts
to answer such questions also focus us on mathematical axioms.
Lastly, one might raise questions about the relative security of our knowledge of
axioms and the theorems which follow from them. All mathematical theories admit
of many different kinds of axiomatizations. One might wonder whether certain
axiomatizations are better than others. Further, one might wonder whether we need to
know or feel more confident in the axioms than the theorems. It takes three hundred
and sixty pages in Principia Mathematica for Whitehead and Russell to prove that
one plus one is two, perhaps prompting Russell to abandon a simple interpretation
of the logicist project, one on which we know the axioms securely and derive our
knowledge of the theorems from that first knowledge.

When pure mathematics is organized as a deductive system—i.e. as the set of

all those propositions that can be deduced from an assigned set of premises—it
becomes obvious that, if we are to believe in the truth of pure mathematics, it
cannot be solely because we believe in the truth of the set of premises. Some of
the premises are much less obvious than some of their consequences and are
believed chiefly because of their consequences. This will be found to be always
the case when a science is arranged as a deductive system. It is not the logically
simplest propositions of the system that are the most obvious, or that provide
the chief part of our reasons for believing in the system.2

Russell’s view here is both obvious and puzzling. Surely he is correct that we choose
axioms according to their consequences. But then we seem to justify the theorems by
their derivability from the axioms. Something here looks awkwardly circular. Any
simple account of mathematics based on knowledge of the axioms is too simple. A
better understanding of the options is in front of us. Let’s proceed.

Bertrand Russell, “Logical Atomism,” in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (London: Routledge,
2

(1924) 2010), 325.

xxviii Introduction: Terminology and axioms

Themes to explore
1 Which particular mathematical theories have been axiomatized? Which
scientific theories?
2 Describe the different ways we can understand the relationship between
axioms and other theorems in mathematics. What is the best way to
understand that relationship?
3 What is the relationship between different axiomatizations of the same
mathematical theory? Consider especially the various axiomatization of
Euclidean geometry.
4 What is the relationship between set theory and other mathematical theories?
Is set theory the most fundamental mathematical theory?

Suggestions for further reading

Euclid. The Elements. [Link]
html. This hyperlinked, annotated, on-line version of Euclid’s master work is a
great way of working with the original.
The Frege-Hilbert Correspondence. In Frege, Gottlob. Philosophical and
Mathematical Correspondence, 31–52. Edited by Gottfried Gabriel, et al.,
translated by Hans Kaal, abridged for English by Brian McGuinness. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1980. A fascinating and accessible debate about the status of the
axioms, the nature of definitions, and mathematical truth, from two of the
leading figures in mathematics and logic in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. See also the excellent discussion of the debate over
definitions in chapter 7 of James Robert Brown’s Philosophy of Mathematics: An
Introduction to the World of Proofs and Pictures, New York: Routledge, 2000.
Hilbert, David. Foundations of Geometry. 2nd ed. Translated by Leo Unger.
La Salle: Open Court, (1899) 1959. Hilbert’s influential axiomatization of
Euclidean geometry.
Hofstadter, Douglas. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York:
Basic Books, 1999. This Pulitzer Prize–winning book is the source of the MIU
system discussed in this section. Hofstadter weaves together observations
about self-reference in mathematics, music, art, and computer science, often
focusing on the roles of formal theories.
Hofweber, Thomas. “Formal Tools and the Philosophy of Mathematics.” In
BL, 197–219. Exploring the limits of formal tools for the philosophy of
mathematics.
Jesseph, Douglas. Squaring the Circle: The War between Hobbes and Wallis.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. Jesseph’s accessible book
focuses largely on the question of whether arithmetic or geometry is more
fundamental, in light of the recent (at the time) development of analytic
geometry.
 Introduction: Terminology and axioms xxix

Mendelson, Elliott. Introduction to Mathematical Logic, 4th ed. Chapman & Hall/
CRC, 1997. Mendelson’s classic, dense book contains formal axiomatizations
of many important logical and mathematical theories.
Oliveri, Gianluigi. “Do We Really Need Axioms in Mathematics?” In C, 119–35.
Oliveri explores the tensions arising from formalizing mathematical practice.
Paseau, Alexander. “What’s the Point of Complete Rigour?” Forthcoming in
Mind. Questions about the role of axiomatizations in the philosophy of
mathematics.
Smart, James. Modern Geometries. 5th ed. Cengage, 1998. A great textbook on a
variety of geometries, where Smart includes various alternative axiomatizations.
Tiles, Mary. The Philosophy of Set Theory: An Historical Introduction to Cantor’s
Paradise. Mineola: Dover, 2004. Tiles traces the development of set theory in
its early stages.
Van Heijenoort, Jean. From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical
Logic, 1879-1931. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. A
collection of the most important original papers in the most fruitful period of
the development of formal logical and mathematical theories.
Whitehead, Alfred North and Bertrand Russell. Principia Mathematica to *56.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. The early portions of the
logicist project reducing mathematics to logic or set theory.

Solutions to T1–T4
T1. MIUUI
1. MI Axiom
2. MII 1, R2
3. MIIII 2, R2
4. MIIIIIIII 3, R2
5. MIUIIII 4, R3
6. MIUUI 5, R3

T2. MIIUIUIUIII
1. MI Axiom
2. MII 1, R2
3. MIIII 2, R2
4. MIIIIIIII 3, R2
5. MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 4, R2
6. MIIUIIIIIIIIIII 5, R3
7. MIIUIUIIIIIII 6, R3
8. MIIUIUIUIII 7, R3
xxx Introduction: Terminology and axioms

T3. MIIUIIIUIIUIIIU
1. MI Axiom
2. MII 1, R2
3. MIIII 2, R2
4. MIIIIIIII 3, R2
5. MIIUIII 4, R3
6. MIIUIIIU 5, R1
7. MIIUIIIUIIUIIIU 6, R2

T4. MU
T4 is not derivable. For a proof, see Hofstadter, 259–61.
part one
Ancients
Introduction
to part I

T he first part of our historical survey focuses on the work of the ancient
Greek philosophers Pythagoras, Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle. Many of
the persistent themes in the philosophy of mathematics were discussed by the
ancients. How does mathematics relate to the perceivable world of sensation?
How does our knowledge of mathematics relate to our knowledge of the
sensible world? Are the objects of mathematics, like numbers and shapes, real
things? How peculiar is infinity, and why?
Historians of mathematics often trace the view that mathematics describes a
realm separate from the one that we perceive with our senses to the Pythagoreans,
whom we discuss in Chapter 1. The Pythagoreans saw mathematics as part of
the hidden, underlying structure of the universe, to be discovered by reasoning
rather than sensation. Plato, whose work is the subject of Chapter 2, followed
the Pythagoreans in arguing that the real world is not available to sensation,
but to be discovered, or recollected, by the soul. In contemporary philosophy,
the views of Pythagoras and Plato survive in what is now called mathematical
realism or platonism.
Plato’s work also derives inspiration from Parmenides, also discussed in
Chapter 1. Parmenides believed that reality is stable and unchanging, unlike
the world of sense perception in which things seem constantly to move and
alter their properties. The tree outside my window buds and leafs in the spring,
turns all sorts of colors in the autumn, and becomes barren in the winter. Three
is always prime; the angles of a triangle always add to two right angles. From
Parmenides, Plato took the view that the world of sense experience is less real
than the world of mathematics, which in turn is even less real than the world
of what Plato calls the forms. The view of mathematics as our most stable and
4 Part I Ancients

enduring pursuit can be seen through the ages, from Parmenides and Plato,
through Descartes and Leibniz, Frege and Russell, to Gödel and Katz.
In defense of Parmenides’ views, Zeno of Elea presented some enduringly
influential paradoxes, also found in Chapter 1, in both the introduction and the
source readings. Zeno’s paradoxes invoke or assume infinities of division, like
the claim that time or space can be divided into infinitely many smaller units.
The problems of how to understand infinity, both in the small and in the large,
are themes throughout the history of philosophy. Aristotle’s view about the
paradoxes, also found in Chapter 1, introduces a distinction between potential
and actual infinities which was the dominant solution to the paradoxes for
two millennia. In the nineteenth century, Cantor’s work on set theory led him
to the discovery of different sizes or levels of infinity. The calculus of Leibniz
and Newton, grounded in the nineteenth-century work on limits, introduced
new ways to approach the problems, which we discuss in the introduction to
Chapter 1.
Aristotle’s work, incomparably influential through the Middle Ages and
beyond, is the subject of Chapter 3. In the philosophy of mathematics, Aristotle
attempts to understand our knowledge of mathematics without believing in a
separate realm of forms or mathematical objects. He argues that mathematical
knowledge is knowledge of the forms of objects and that forms are essential to
the nature of objects. For an orange, say, to be what it is, it needs both form
and matter, the stuff of which it is composed and the way in which it is put
together. Mathematical knowledge is of forms of perceivable objects, like the
spherical shape of an orange, which we can understand through a process we
can call abstraction. The view that our mathematical knowledge arises from
mental processes like reflection on the world of perception, recurs, in different
ways, in the work of the Moderns like Locke and Kant and in contemporary
intuitionism.
1
Pythagoras,
Parmenides, and
Zeno’s paradoxes

Introductory overview

Ancient Greece and the pre-Socratics (p. 6)

The Pythagoreans: Chaos, order, and mathematics (p. 6)
Zeno’s paradoxes (p. 10)
Responses to Zeno’s paradoxes (p. 12)

Readings

Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras on the origins of the world (p. 17)

Porphyry, Pythagorean uses of numbers (p. 17)
Kline, The Pythagoreans (p. 18)
Parmenides, The oneness of being (p. 25)
Marshall, The Eleatics: Parmenidean oneness and Zeno’s paradoxes (p. 26)
Aristotle, On Zeno’s paradoxes (p. 28)
6

INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW

Ancient Greece and the pre-Socratics

Our first selections focus on the work of three pre-Socratic philosophers,
Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Zeno, the last of whom was writing in support
of Parmenidean doctrine. Little remains of the writings of most pre-Socratic
philosophers; nothing of Pythagoras, for example, is extant. We know about their
views mainly on the basis of what others, especially Plato and Aristotle, wrote.
Greek civilization dates back to around 2800 BCE. In the eighth century
BCE, the Greeks adopted a Phoenician alphabet which led to greater facility
in recording their history and learning, including ideas gathered from travels
into Egypt and Babylonia. The Ionian school of philosophy, whose proponents
included Thales (who calculated the heights of pyramids using their shadows),
Anaximander, and Anaximenes, flourished in the seventh and sixth centuries
BCE in Asia Minor. The Ionians are reputed to have explained diverse familiar
phenomena in terms of simplifying unifying hypotheses or material. Thales is
reported to have claimed that the underlying essence and origin of the universe
is water. For Anaximenes, the unifying element is air. For Anaximander, the
unifying principle is more abstract: the infinite or boundless.
Pythagoras, the subject of our first selection, led his own school in southern
Italy, starting in the sixth century BCE. Pythagoras’s work is of interest because
of his view that the world is essentially mathematical. In addition to this
introduction, we include short excerpts from two historians of the second
century CE, Diogenes Laertius and Porphyry.
In the fifth century BCE, Sicily and Elea, in southern Italy, were home for
Parmenides and Zeno, the subjects of the remaining selections of this section.
Zeno’s paradoxes as well as arguments in support of Parmenides’ philosophy are
of lasting importance largely because of their uses of infinity. Zeno showed that
reasoning with infinity requires care. For Parmenides’s arguments for the oneness
of Being, in addition to this introduction, we have a selection from his poem,
“On Nature”; a discussion of Zeno’s paradoxes in a selection from a reader on
Greek philosophy, and excerpts on Aristotle’s response to the paradoxes.
Athens was the home of the sophists in the fifth century BCE, and then of
the most prominent school, Plato’s Academy, where Aristotle studied in the
fourth century BCE and where Euclid, we believe, also studied. Our next section
is devoted to the writings of Plato and the following one to Aristotle’s work.

The Pythagoreans: Chaos, order, and

mathematics
One achievement of the Greeks in mathematics was to recognize that
talk about mathematics seems to entail believing in an unseen world. Our
 Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Zeno’s paradoxes, Introductory overview 7

mathematical claims regard circles and numbers as proper objects, not as

sensible objects. The Greeks demanded proofs of mathematical theorems and
were not satisfied simply by the practical utility of mathematics. Among the
most important discoveries of the Pythagoreans, for example, was a proof that
2 is irrational.
The Pythagorean discovery of the transcendence of mathematics might,
like Ionian claims about the ultimate nature of the world, be aligned with
psychological empowerment over an irrational universe. The world as we
perceive it is orderly and predictable. The odd surprise, a tsunami, say, or a
terrorist attack, is often or even always explicable in hindsight. We complain
about our weather forecasters and political scientists. But that’s mostly because
we have an expectation of order in the world and we believe that events are
explicable and often predictable.
This perception of order may not be utterly natural. It is easy to imagine that
the world we perceive as largely explicable in terms of physical forces and laws
would have been seen, by earlier peoples, as largely chaotic. The Greeks, through
a variety of methods, tamed the chaos. The Ionians argued that all diversity is
the result of different combinations of a few familiar substances, or even a
single substance. Thales gave order and organization to the chaos by positing
a single element, water. Democritus favored unseen atoms. Empedocles, and
other Greeks following him, posited four elements: earth, air, fire, and water.
These were scientific hypotheses about the ultimate structure of the world. If
we could understand that structure, we could see the underlying natural order
of a world which seems chaotic.
Unlike those who saw the world as made of earth, air, fire, and water, the
Pythagoreans posited numbers as the fundamental constituents of all that we
experience. Numbers were to the Pythagoreans as fundamental particles like
atoms or quarks might be to us. The Pythagoreans thus did not distinguish
between mathematics and science. Explanations of observable phenomena
were made in terms of basic mathematical objects.
At first glance, the Pythagorean claim appears absurd. And indeed, the
Pythagoreans were a secret cult with some odd beliefs. Rules of the Pythagorean
order included abstaining from beans, not picking up what has fallen, not
sitting on quart measures, and not letting swallows share one’s roof. One can
see Pythagorean superstitions as artifacts of an irrational worldview which is
transforming to a rational one. While the Pythagoreans were, with the earlier
Ionians, attempting to tame nature, they also had a distinctly premodern
worldview.
It is difficult to know what it would mean to regard the world as chaotic,
mysterious, and capricious, in a way that positing numbers as the fundamental
elements of the world would improve. Ways to tame chaos cognitively are
found in the work of later philosophers. Kant, for example, believed that order
is essential to our cognition, that we impose order naturally in the process of
perceiving the world. The world as it is in itself, if we can say anything about
it, is completely unordered. Order comes from thinking about the world using
8 Part I Ancients

concepts which are constitutive of our cognition, built into the nature of our
thought. On Kant’s view, one cannot perceive a disordered world; perceiving is
ordering. But Kant’s view does not help understand the Pythagorean attempt to
tame chaos by positing mathematical atoms.
Our confidence in the orderliness of the universe tends to come from our
estimation of contemporary science. Scientific theories are increasingly broad
and detailed, explaining and predicting a wide range of phenomena and
enabling us to develop startlingly new technologies. Like the Pythagoreans, we
currently lack a perfected science. But despite our lack of full understanding
of the nature of the universe, we don’t think of the world as utterly chaotic.
We presume some underlying order to the world and understand that there
are limits to our ability to understand the order. The main distinction between
the Ionians and some other cultures of the time seems to be that the Ionians
provided what we can see as scientific reasons for order in the world as opposed
to mythological reasons. A mythological explanation imputes something like
human rationality to the order of the world. A natural explanation removes that
anthropomorphic element. The Ionians saw reasons and order and explanations
in nature. For the Pythagoreans, those reasons were, at root, mathematical.
Natural explanations are useful, though they may not solve the underlying
mystery of the universe. If we want to know why person A fell off of a cliff, it
is useful to know that person B pushed him. It raises the question of why B
pushed A. We might find out that C pushed B. And that D pushed C. et cetera.
Questions about ultimate causes get pushed back by natural explanations,
but they may not be eliminated. Explanations in terms of intermediate causes
provide order to some portion of the universe. It is not clear what it would mean
to provide an ultimate explanation, to fully tame the chaos.
Some philosophers and theologians posit an uncaused cause, God.
Cosmological arguments for the existence of God say that natural explanations
for events are ultimately incomplete, that we need some sort of teleological
explanation for the world: we need an explanation of A’s falling which appeals
to more than antecedent causes and physical regularities (or laws). We need
purpose and intrinsic meaning in the world.
In contrast, those who favor exclusively natural explanations see the
presumption of order underlying cosmological arguments as itself mythological.
Perhaps the only explanations we can give are natural. The limits to our abilities
to impose order on the universe are unclear.
Setting aside the question of whether we need teleological explanations of the
world, we see that natural science provides, at least, intermediary explanations
of causes. Those explanations replace a visible world with a less-visible world, of
atoms, say. The Pythagorean claim is that the less-visible world is mathematical
in nature. Is there any sense that we can make, today, of the claim that the
world is mathematical?
One way the world is mathematical is in our many uses of mathematics to
describe the world. Galileo famously wrote of the increasing role of mathematics
in natural science during the Scientific Revolution.
 Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Zeno’s paradoxes, Introductory overview 9

Philosophy is written in this grand book of the universe, which stands continually
open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to
comprehend the language and to read the alphabet in which it is composed.
It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles,
circles and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to
understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders in a dark labyrinth.1

Natural science continues to invoke mathematics ubiquitously. We use real

numbers for constants and for measurement. We invoke probabilities in
fields as diverse as psychology, biology, and even quantum mechanics. The
inference from the uses of mathematics to describe the world to the existence
of mathematical objects is central in contemporary work in the philosophy
of mathematics, especially surrounding what is called the indispensability
argument.
There is another, even more robust thread of Pythagoreanism in contemporary
thought. We mainly think of bodies as physical objects. But physical objects
have vague boundaries and puzzling identity conditions over time. We ingest
food frequently and inhale air constantly. We lose skin and perspire. Which
molecules are part of my body and which are not? Is the cragged old tree
the same as the small sapling? Such questions raise problems for theories of
material constitution of physical bodies.
We avoid some of the problems of material constitution by taking bodies to
be composed of smaller particles. Perhaps there are no facts about the constancy
of my body or of the tree, only facts about its constituent parts. We can think
of the world as composed of four-dimensional aggregates of these elements,
three spatial dimensions and a fourth dimension of time. We can take some of
these aggregates as ultimate or atomic.
But atomism has problems, too. Electrons and smaller elements of ordinary
objects have weird identity conditions. For example, it is arbitrary, at times, to
say whether two point events are moments in the career of one electron or two
different ones.
An alternative to atomism is a field theory of distributions of states over
space-time. There are electromagnetic fields, gravitational fields, and others.
If we take these overlapping field theories to describe the universe, we can
think of the world as composed of space-time points and their various states.
The objects are the space-time regions themselves. We can identify space-time
regions with Cartesian coordinates, making an arbitrary choice of coordinate
axes. We attribute properties like strengths of gravitational fields to points of
space-time, taken as numbers or sets.
So the world can still be seen as essentially mathematical, just points in
space, identified by their numerical locations, with mathematically describable

Galileo Galilei, The Assayer, in The Essential Galileo, edited by Maurice Finocchiaro (Indianapolis:
1

Hackett, 2008).
10 Part I Ancients

properties of the strengths of various fields. This contemporary Pythagoreanism

is, presumably, not precisely what the Pythagoreans themselves believed. But
we can see from these contemporary views the long legacy of the old beliefs.

Zeno’s paradoxes
Parmenides, who lived in the late sixth and early fifth century BCE, was the
founder of what became known as the Eleatic school of philosophy. He believed
that reality was an unchanging, unmoving whole, consisting of no parts. On
such a view, all change, including motion, is an illusion. Our selection from
Parmenides is an excerpt from his poem, “On Nature.” In it, Parmenides
presents a series of abstract arguments which all conclude that being is one
and immutable.
Zeno of Elea, following Parmenides, offers four paradoxes of motion: Achilles
and the Racetrack, Achilles and the Tortoise, the Arrow, and the Moving
Blocks. Each paradox attempts to show that motion is impossible, supporting
Parmenides’ claim of the oneness of the universe. Let’s look at these four
paradoxes briefly.

Achilles and the racetrack

Achilles must complete a hundred-meter racetrack. But in order to do this, he
must first complete half of the track; and before that, he must complete half
of the first half of the track (i.e., 1/4 of the track). In general, before getting
to any point, Achilles must first cover half of the distance from where he is to
that point. If space is infinitely divisible, Achilles must cover an infinite number
of (halfway) points prior to catching up with the tortoise. But as it is impossible
to travel an infinite number of points in a finite time, Achilles cannot complete
the track.
A similar argument shows that Achilles can never even start the track. If
space is infinitely divisible, then there is an infinite number of points between
his starting position and any other point—no matter how close to him—on the
track.

Achilles and the tortoise

Achilles must run a race against a tortoise. To make it interesting, Achilles gives
the tortoise a head-start, let’s say 50 meters. But now, Achilles can never catch
the tortoise. For while he attempts to make up the 50 meters, the tortoise will
be in motion (albeit much more slowly than Achilles). So when Achilles gets
to the tortoise’s starting point, the tortoise will have moved on, say to the
60-meter mark. And when Achilles reaches 60 meters, the tortoise will again
have moved further. This goes on infinitely: no matter how many times Achilles
 Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Zeno’s paradoxes, Introductory overview 11

reaches a given point formerly occupied by the tortoise, the tortoise will have
moved a little further. Achilles can never catch the tortoise.

The arrow
The arrow paradox assumes that the whole that we call time is built up out of
units (instants) that cannot be further subdivided. Consider now the flight of
an arrow. The arc traced by the arrow will consist, as per our hypothesis, of a
number of instants. Suppose we take one of these instants, and ask whether
the arrow is moving at that instant. If we answer that the arrow is in motion
at the instant, then we seem to be committed to the arrow being at one place
at the beginning of the instant, and at another distinct place at the end of that
instant. But this seems immediately to commit us to there being parts of an
instant, its beginning and its end, and this runs counter to our assumption that
time consists of instants which cannot be further subdivided. Hence the arrow
cannot be in motion at any instant. But surely the flight of the arrow consists
of the sum its motion in each instant. Since it does not move at any instant, the
sum of these instants is zero: the arrow cannot move.

The moving blocks

Suppose we have three rows of blocks set up as in Figure 1 below. The middle
row (row B) remains stationary; the top row (row A) is in leftward motion, and
the bottom row (row C) is in rightward motion.
Suppose it takes an instant for a moving block to pass a stationary block (as
before, an instant is the smallest non-divisible unit of time). Thus, at a given
instant, represented in Figure 2, block 2 of row A moves left and occupies a spot
in line with block 1 row B. During the same instant, block 2 of row C moves
right, and occupies a spot in line with block 3 of row C. But during this instant,
row A and row C have moved a distance of two blocks with respect to one
another (since block 3 of row A is now in line with block 1 of row C). How long
did it take row A and row C to move a distance of one block with respect to one
another? Presumably half this time. But this is half an instant, which contradicts
our assumption that an instant is the smallest unit of time permitting no further
subdivision.

Figure 1 Figure 2

Row A 1 2 3 1 2 3

Row B 1 2 3 1 2 3

Row C 1 2 3 1 2 3
12 Part I Ancients

Each of the paradoxes aims to show that motion is illusory. If motion were
genuine, then, as it is a form of change, it would refute the Parmenidean thesis
that all change is illusory. Various commentators2 have observed that the four
paradoxes can be put together into a single argument. The single argument
shows that no matter what assumptions we make regarding whether space
and time are continuous or discrete, our position can be reduced to absurdity
by one or another of the paradoxes. Thus space and time are not composed of
parts—regardless of whether these parts have limits on their divisibility or not.
On this view, if space, time, motion are wholes composed of parts, then
we must ask whether the parts are infinitely divisible such that there is no part
that cannot be divided into smaller parts. If so, then the racetrack and Achilles
and the Tortoise remain problems. If the parts are not infinitely divisible, then
space, time, motion are wholes composed of parts, where the smallest such
parts cannot be further subdivided. But then we are faced with the arrow and
moving blocks paradoxes, since these seem to show that absurdity arises from
the assumption that there exist smallest non-divisible units of time. Thus there
are only two possibilities: either the wholes that are motion, space, time are
composed of infinitely divisible parts, or of parts that are not further divisible.
And, if Zeno is correct, in either case, absurdity results. Space and time is a
single, unchanging whole, as described by Parmenides.

Responses to Zeno’s paradoxes

Our final selection in this chapter is a piece from Aristotle on Zeno’s paradoxes.
Aristotle takes the paradoxes to show that space and time cannot be composed
of an actual infinite number of points/instants. For Aristotle, to say that there
are an infinite number of points on the track that Achilles must cross means
only that there are potentially infinitely many such points. But those points only
come into actual existence when we mark them off. For example, the point that
is halfway along the track is not one of infinitely many points from which the
track is built. Rather, the point comes into existence as a result of our dividing it
off from the whole that is the track. It existed potentially (since there was always
the possibility of our marking that point), but it did not exist as its own individual
unit until we marked it off. On this view, it is not that the track has somehow
been built up out of individually existing units (points). Instead, the existence
of the track has priority, and the points come into existence as a result of our
activity, that is, marking the points by dividing the track into smaller parts.
If the problem created by the two Achilles paradoxes is that Achilles cannot
complete the track because he has, impossibly, to pass infinitely many points,
then Aristotle’s solution works by denying that there really are infinitely many

See Wesley C. Salmon, ed., Zeno’s Paradoxes (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2001); Mary
2

Tiles, The Philosophy of Set Theory: An Historical Introduction to Cantor’s Paradise (Mineola: Dover,
2004); and G. E. L. Owen, “Zeno and the Mathematicians,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
New Series 58 (1958): 199–222.
 Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Zeno’s paradoxes, Introductory overview 13

points for Achilles to pass. There is just the track itself. The track can potentially
be divided into smaller and smaller points, but these points do not exist until
we do the dividing. Thus Achilles does not have to pass infinitely many points to
complete the track, or to catch the tortoise.
Aristotle rejects the assumption that the whole that we call time is built up out
of units that cannot be further subdivided. Time, like space is potentially infinitely
divisible, but that only means we can divide “bits” of time as small as we like. The
whole that is time comes first—it is not built out of tiny “instants” that cannot be
further divided. Thus these paradoxes do not really arise in his view.
Aristotle completes his response to the arrow paradox by noting that
‘motion’ and ‘rest’ are terms that make sense only relative to periods of time.
There can be no motion in an instant (where an instant is the smallest possible
unit of time), but nor can there be rest.3 Note that this denial of the possibility
of motion in an instant is rejected by contemporary mathematics and physics.4
The standard contemporary solution to the paradoxes uses various mathematical
concepts such as limits, derivatives and sums of sequences. The problem in the
Achilles and racetrack paradox is supposed to be that to reach the end of the
track, Achilles first has to reach the halfway point. But before that he must reach
the 1/4 way point, and the 1/8 point. If the track is composed of an infinite
number of such midway points, then, to finish the race, Achilles must travel an
infinite number of points in a finite time, which seems impossible.
To solve this paradox, we need to introduce the concept of a limit. A sequence
converges on a limit if (very roughly) it gets closer and closer to the value of
that limit without ever reaching it. In our present case, Achilles must travel the
following distances:
1/2 (of the track) = 1/2
1/2 + 1/4 (i.e., the midway point between the start point and halfway) = 3/4
1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 = 7/8
1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 = 15/16
The sum of this series approaches its limit of 1 without ever reaching it. Thus the
sum of the infinite series of halfway points that Achilles must cross is 1. The infinite
number of halfway points add up not to an infinite sum impossible to traverse, but
only to a finite number which presumably can be traversed in a finite time.
In the arrow paradox, Zeno assumes that an arrow cannot have any velocity
in an instant. If the arrow’s trajectory is made up of an infinite amount of
such velocity-free instants, then the arrow cannot be in motion. The standard
solution to this paradox involves defining motion as a derivative of an object’s
position. On this understanding, the difference between rest and motion is not

Mary Tiles, The Philosophy of Set Theory: An Historical Introduction to Cantor’s Paradise (Mineola:
3

Dover, 2004), 18.

See Bradley Dowden, “Zeno’s Paradoxes,” in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by
4

James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. [Link] and Nick Huggett, “Zeno’s
Paradoxes,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Fall 2010. http://
[Link]/archives/win2010/entries/paradox-zeno.
14 Part I Ancients

about the behavior of an object at any particular moment in time. Objects are
only in motion at a time when they occupy different positions at times before
or after that time.
One quick way out of the moving blocks paradox is to appeal to relative
motion. The A blocks move in one direction, the C blocks in another, so
naturally they will pass each other twice as quickly as they pass the stationary
B blocks. However the interpretation of the paradox given above shows that
there cannot be smallest units of time (instants) which cannot be further
subdivided. Another way of saying this is that time is made up of discrete
instants, rather than being continuous. However, since contemporary physics
and mathematics treat time as being continuous, proponents of the standard
solution here simply agree that time cannot be discrete. The paradox presents
no problem if we see time as continuous.
While Parmenides’ view of the oneness of being has only thin relevance to
contemporary science and philosophy, the questions raised by Zeno’s paradoxes
about infinity and Aristotle’s distinction between potential and actual infinity,
to which we return in our section on Aristotle’s work, were highly influential
and remain so.

Themes to explore
1 What does the Pythagorean claim that the world is made of numbers mean?
Is there any way to make that claim plausible today?
2 How is the Pythagorean claim that the world is mathematical like the claims
that everything is water or that everything is made of earth, air, fire, and water?
3 In what ways does contemporary scientific theory invoke mathematics?
4 Why did the Pythagoreans favor whole numbers? Why are irrational numbers
a problem for them? Could Pythagorean concerns about irrational numbers
be mitigated by contemporary work?
5 How do contemporary mathematical tools undermine Zeno’s paradoxes? Do
Zeno’s paradoxes present any lasting challenges to accounts of motion and
change?

Suggested readings
Dowden, Bradley. 2001. “Zeno’s Paradoxes.” In Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, edited by James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. [Link]
edu/zeno-par/. Dowden presents the paradoxes perspicuously along with their
standard contemporary solutions.
Galilei, Galileo. The Assayer. In The Essential Galileo, edited by Maurice
Finocchiaro. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008. A classic text from 1623 in which
Galileo argues for a mathematical approach to physics.
 Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Zeno’s paradoxes, Introductory overview 15

Heath, Thomas. A History of Greek Mathematics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921.

Heath, Thomas. A Manual of Greek Mathematics. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1931. Heath’s books on Greek mathematics are essential reading.
Huggett, Nick. “Zeno’s Paradoxes.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
edited by Edward N. Zalta, Fall 2010. [Link]
win2010/entries/paradox-zeno. Accessed March 4, 2014. Huggett presents
the paradoxes of plurality and others, in addition to the paradoxes of motion,
and discusses Zeno’s lasting influence on philosophy.
Kline, Morris. Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1972. Kline’s three-volume masterpiece is excellent on
both history and philosophy.
Owen, G. E. L. “Zeno and the Mathematicians.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, New Series 58 (1958): 199–222.
Plato. Parmenides. Translated by M. L. Gill and P. Ryan. In Plato, Complete
Works, edited by J. M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1997.
Quine, W. V. “Whither Physical Objects.” In Boston Studies in the Philosophy of
Science, vol. 39: Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos, edited by R. S. Cohen,
P. K. Feyerabend, and M. Wartofsky, 497–504. Dordrecht: D. Reidel
Publishing Company, 1976. Quine argues for the view that our ontology
could really just be space-time points, understood as mathematical objects,
with their various properties.
Salmon, W. C., ed. Zeno’s Paradoxes. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2001.
Tiles, Mary. The Philosophy of Set Theory: An Introduction to Cantor’s Paradise.
Mineola: Dover, 2004. Tiles’ introductory chapter to this book on the
mathematical developments of infinity in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries includes a useful discussion of Zeno’s paradoxes and the classical
conceptions of infinity.
16
 17

READINGS

Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras on the origins

of the world
The monad was the beginning of everything. From the monad proceeds an indefinite
duad, which is subordinate to the monad as to its cause. From the monad and the
indefinite duad proceed numbers. And from numbers signs. And from these last, lines of
which plane figures consist. And from plane figures are derived solid bodies. And from
solid bodies sensible bodies, of which last there are four elements: fire, water, earth, and
air. And the world—which is endued with life, and intellect, and which is of a spherical
figure (having the earth, which is also spherical and inhabited all over in its center)—
results from a combination of these elements and derives its motion from them.

Porphyry, Pythagorean uses of numbers

The Pythagoreans specialized in the study of numbers to explain their teachings
symbolically, as do geometricians, inasmuch as the primary forms and principles are
hard to understand and express otherwise, in plain discourse. A similar case is the
representation of sounds by letters, which are known by marks, which are called the
first elements of learning; later, they inform us these are not the true elements, which
they only signify.
As the geometricians cannot express incorporeal forms in words, and have
recourse to the descriptions of figures (as when they say, “That is a triangle,” and
yet do not mean that the actually seen lines are the triangle, but only what they
represent, the knowledge in the mind), so the Pythagoreans used the same objective
method in respect to first reasons and forms. As these incorporeal forms and first
principles could not be expressed in words, they had recourse to demonstration by
numbers. Number one denoted to them the reason of unity, identity, equality, the
purpose of friendship, sympathy, and conservation of the universe, which results
from persistence in sameness. For unity in the details harmonizes all the parts of a
whole, as by the participation of the first cause.
Number two, or dyad, signifies the two-fold reason of diversity and inequality,
of everything that is divisible, or mutable, existing at one time in one way, and at
another time in another way. These methods were not confined to the Pythagoreans,
being used by other philosophers to denote unitive powers which contain all things in
the universe, among which are certain reasons of equality, dissimilitude and diversity.
These reasons are what they meant by the terms monad and dyad, or by the words
uniform, biform, or diversiform.
The same reasons apply to their use of other numbers, which were ranked
according to certain powers. Things that had a beginning, middle, and end, they
denoted by the number three, saying that anything that has a middle is triform, which
18 Part I Ancients

was applied to every perfect thing. They said that if anything was perfect it would
make use of this principle and be adorned according to it; and as they had no other
name for it, they invented the form triad; and whenever they tried to bring us to the
knowledge of what is perfect they led us to that by the form of this triad. So also with
the other numbers, which were ranked according to the same reasons.
All other things were comprehended under a single form and power which they
called decad, explaining it by a pun as dechada, meaning comprehension. That is
why they called ten a perfect number, the most perfect of all as comprehending all
difference of numbers, reasons, species and proportions. For if the nature of the
universe be defined according to the reasons and proportions of members, and if
that which is produced, increased, and perfected, proceed according to the reason
of numbers; and since the decad comprehends every reason of numbers, every
proportion, and every species, why should nature herself not be denoted by the most
perfect number, ten? Such was the use of numbers among the Pythagoreans.

Kline, The Pythagoreans

One of the great Greek contributions to the very concept of mathematics was the
conscious recognition and emphasis of the fact that mathematical entities, numbers,
and geometrical figures are abstractions, ideas entertained by the mind and sharply
distinguished from physical objects or pictures. It is true that even some primitive
civilizations and certainly the Egyptians and Babylonians had learned to think about
numbers as divorced from physical objects. Yet there is some question as to how
much they were consciously aware of the abstract nature of such thinking. Moreover,
geometrical thinking in all pre-Greek civilizations was definitely tied to matter. To
the Egyptians, for example, a line was no more than either a stretched rope or the
edge of a field and a rectangle was the boundary of a field.
The recognition that mathematics deals with abstractions may with some
confidence be attributed to the Pythagoreans. However, this may not have been
true at the outset of their work. Aristotle declared5 that the Pythagoreans regarded
numbers as the ultimate components of real, material objects. Numbers did not have
a detached existence apart from objects of sense. When the early Pythagoreans said
that all objects were composed of (whole) numbers or that numbers were the essence
of the universe, they meant it literally, because numbers to them were like atoms
are to us. It is also believed that the sixth- and fifth-century Pythagoreans did not
really distinguish numbers from geometrical dots. Geometrically, then, a number
was an extended point or a very small sphere. However, Eudemus, as reported by
Proclus, says that Pythagoras rose to higher principles (than had the Egyptians and
Babylonians) and considered abstract problems for the pure intelligence. Eudemus
adds that Pythagoras was the creator of pure mathematics, which he made into a
liberal art.

Metaphysics I.5, 986a1–21, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes (Princeton:
5

Princeton University Press, 1984).

 Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Zeno’s paradoxes 19

The Pythagoreans usually depicted numbers as dots in sand or as pebbles. They

classified the numbers according to the shapes made by the arrangements of the
dots or pebbles. Thus the numbers 1, 3, 6, and 10 were called triangular because the
corresponding dots could be arranged as triangles (Figure 1). The fourth triangular
number, 10, especially fascinated the Pythagoreans because it was a prized number
for them, and had 4 dots on each side, 4 being another favorite number. They realized
that the sums 1, 1 + 2, 1 + 2 + 3, and so forth gave the triangular numbers and that
1 + 2 + . . . + n = (n/2)(n + 1).
The numbers 1, 4, 9, 16, . . . were called square numbers because as dots they
could be arranged as squares (Figure 2). Composite (nonprime) numbers which were
not perfect squares were called oblong.
From the geometrical arrangements certain properties of the whole numbers
became evident. Introducing the slash, as in the third illustration of Figure 2, shows
that the sum of two consecutive triangular numbers is a square number. This is true
generally, for as we can see, in modern notation,
n/2 ∙ (n+1) + (n + 1)/2 ∙ (n + 2) = (n + 1)2
That the Pythagoreans could prove this general conclusion, however, is doubtful.
To pass from one square number to the next one, the Pythagoreans had the scheme
shown in Figure 3. The dots to the right of and below the lines in the figure formed
what they called a gnomon. Symbolically, what they saw here was that n2 + (2n + 1) =
(n + 1)2. Further, if we start with 1 and add the gnomon 3 and then the gnomon 5, and
so forth, what we have in our symbolism is
1 + 3 + 5 + . . . + (2n – 1) = n2.
As to the word ‘gnomon’, originally in Babylonia it probably meant an upright
stick whose shadow was used to tell time. In Pythagoras’ time it meant a carpenter’s

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3
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 — Anteeksi. Minun tutkimukseni ovat todistaneet, että
vaaleatukkainen nainen on ehdottomasti näiden seikkailujen
päähenkilö, ja että Lupin häntä johtaa.

— Mitä hyötyä siitä on. Arvoitus pysyy yhtä epäselvänä.

Vaaleatukkainen nainen surmaa varastaakseen Sinisen timantin, eikä
varastakaan sitä. Sen jälkeen hän varastaa sen ja jättää sen sitten
toisen hyödyksi.

— Sille minä en mitään mahda.

— Ehkä ette, mutta joku toinen voisi ehkä…

— Ketä tarkoitatte?

Kreivi arkaili sanoa, mutta kreivitär yhtyi puheeseen ja vastasi

suoraan:

— Löytyy mies, yksi ainoa mies teidän jälkeenne, joka minun

mielestäni voi voittaa Lupinin ja pakottaa hänet antautumaan. Herra
Ganimard, olisiko teille vastenmielistä se, että me pyytäisimme
Sherlock Holmesin apua?

Hän joutui hämilleen.

— Ei suinkaan, mutta… minä en oikein ymmärrä…

— Kuulkaahan. Kaikki nämä salaisuudet suututtavat minua. Minä

tahdon selvyyttä. Herra Gerbois ja herra d'Hautrec haluavat samaa,
ja me olemme liittyneet yhteen kääntyäksemme kuuluisan
englantilaisen salapoliisin puoleen.
 — Te olette oikeassa, hyvä rouva, lausui tarkastaja avomielisesti,
ja se on hänelle kunniaksi luettava, — te olette oikeassa; vanha
Ganimard ei pysty taistelemaan Arsène Lupinia vastaan. Onnistuuko
Sherlock Holmes siinä? Minä toivon sitä, sillä minä ihailen häntä
suuresti, mutta se ei ole luultavaa.

— Eikö ole luultavaa, että hän onnistuu siinä?

— Se on minun mielipiteeni. Minun mielestäni kaksintaistelu

Sherlock
Holmesin ja Arsène Lupinin välillä on jo ennakolta päätetty asia.
Englantilainen häviää.

— Joka tapauksessa, voiko hän luottaa apuunne?

— Ehdottomasti, hyvä rouva. Minä lupaan empimättä auttaa

häntä.

— Tiedättekö hänen osoitteensa?

— Tunnen, Parker Street 219.

Samana iltana herra ja rouva de Crozon luopuivat kanteestaan

herra
Bleicheniä vastaan ja yhteinen kirje lähetettiin Sherlock Holmesille.
SHERLOCK HOLMES ALOITTAA
TAISTELUN

— Mitä herroille saa olla?

— Mitä vain, vastasi Arsène Lupin kuten ainakin mies, joka panee
vähän painoa ruoalle… Mitä vain, mutta ei lihaa eikä alkoholia.

Viinuri poistui luoden häneen halveksivan katseen. Minä

huudahdin:

— Mitä, yhä vielä kasvissyöjä?

— Enemmän kuin koskaan ennen, vakuutti Lupin.

— Maun, uskonnon ja tottumuksen vuoksi?

— Terveydellisistä syistä.

— Ettekö koskaan hairahdu?

— Kyllä, hienoissa seurapiireissä liikkuessani… jotta en erottuisi

muista.
 Söimme päivällistä pohjoisen aseman lähellä pienessä ravintolassa,
jonne Arsène Lupin oli minut kutsunut. Hänen tapansa oli toisinaan
aamupäivällä sähköttää minulle ja määrätä missä Pariisin kolkassa
tapaisimme toisemme. Hän oli silloin aina ehtymättömän pirteä,
iloinen, vaatimaton ja ystävällinen, ja hänellä oli aina kerrottavana
jokin odottamaton kasku, muisto tai seikkailu, josta en tiennyt sitä
ennen.

Sinä iltana hän näytti entistäkin hauskemmalta. Hän nauroi ja

jutteli harvinaisen vauhdikkaasti, ja hänen puheessaan oli tuota
hienoa ivaa, joka hänelle oli tyypillistä, ivaa, joka oli kepeää ja
välitöntä, vailla kaikkea katkeruutta. Oli hauskaa nähdä hänet
sellaisena enkä minä voinut olla ilmaisematta tyytyväisyyttäni.

— Niin, toisinaan kaikki tuntuu minusta ihanalta, elämä on kuin

aarre, jota en koskaan ennätä ammentaa loppuun, ja taivas
tietäköön, että elän tuhlaamalla.

— Ehkä liiaksikin.

— Aarre on loppumaton, sanoinhan sen! Minä voin tuhlata ja

haaskata, minä voin heittää voimani ja nuoruuteni joka
ilmansuuntaan, minä teen vain tilaa voimakkaammille ja nuoremmille
voimille. Ja elämäni on todellakin niin kaunista! Minun ei tarvitse
muuta kuin tahtoa, eikö niin, tullakseni tänään tai huomenna…
puhujaksi, tehtaan johtajaksi, valtiolliseksi henkilöksi. No niin, minä
vannon, että se ajatus ei koskaan herää minussa! Arsène Lupin minä
olen, Arsène Lupinina minä pysyn. Ja minä etsin historiasta turhaan
elämää, jota voisin omaani verrata, joka olisi paremmin teoilla
täytetty, kiihkeämpi… Napoleon? Niin, ehkä, mutta silloin Napoleon
loistavan elämänsä loppupuolella, Ranskan sodan aikana, jolloin
Eurooppa hänet tuhosi, ja jolloin hän joka taistelussa kysyi, oliko se
ehkä hänen viimeisensä.

Puhuiko hän tosissaan? Laskiko hän leikkiä? Hänen äänensä oli

kiihkeä, ja hän jatkoi.

— Suuri viehätys on vaarassa, tuossa alituisessa vaaran tunteessa!

Hengittää sitä kuten ilmaa, kuulla sen ympärillään puhaltavan,
ulvovan, vaanivan, lähestyvän. Ja keskellä myrskyä pysyä tyynenä,
hievahtamattakaan! Muuten on hukassa… Yksi ainoa tunne vetää
tälle vertoja, se joka kilpa-auton ohjaajalla on ajaessaan vinhaa
vauhtia. Mutta sellainen ajo kestää vain hetken, minun retkeni
kestää koko elämän!

— Miten runollista! huudahdin. — Ja te aiotte saada minut

uskomaan, ettei teillä ole mitään muuta erikoista levottomuuden
aihetta!

Hän hymyili.

— Te olette tarkka psykologi, hän sanoi. — Toinenkin aihe on

todella olemassa.

Hän kaatoi suuren lasin täyteen vettä, joi sen ja sanoi minulle:

— Olettehan lukenut Temps -lehteä tänään?

— Olen kyllä.

— Sherlock Holmes on tänään iltapäivällä varmaankin tullut

Englannin
Kanaalin yli ja saapunut tänne kello kuuden aikaan.
 — Hitto vieköön! Kuinka niin?

— Crozonit, d'Hautrecin veljenpoika ja Gerbois ovat tarjonneet

hänelle pienen matkan. He tapasivat toisensa pohjoisella asemalla ja
lähtivät sieltä Ganimardin luo. Tällä hetkellä he neuvottelevat kuuden
kesken.

Vaikka hän teki minut tavattoman uteliaaksi, niin en koskaan ollut

rohjennut kysyä Arsène Lupinilta mitään hänen yksityisestä
elämästään ennen kuin hän itse puhui. Minä olin siinä suhteessa
hienotunteinen, enkä siis udellut. Sitä paitsi ei tällä hetkellä vielä, ei
ainakaan virallisesti, ollut mainittu hänen nimeään sinisen timantin
jutun yhteydessä. Minä odotin siis kärsivällisesti. Hän jatkoi:

— Temps julkaisi sitä paitsi tuon kunnon Ganimardin haastattelun,

jonka mukaan eräs vaaleatukkainen nainen, joka olisi muka minun
ystäväni, olisi surmannut d'Hautrecin ja koettanut anastaa rouva de
Crozonilta hänen kuuluisan timanttinsa. Hän siis syyttää minun
olleen näiden rikosten toimeenpanijana.

Minä värisin hiukan. Olisiko se totta? Täytyisikö minun uskoa, että

varastaminen, jolla hän eli, ja tapausten kulku olisi vienyt tämän
miehen rikokseen asti? Minä katsoin häneen. Hän oli aivan tyyni, ja
hänen katseensa oli vilpitön.

Minä tarkastelin hänen käsiään: ne olivat moitteettoman

kaunismuotoiset, todella viattomat kädet, taiteilijan kädet…

— Ganimard näkee unia, minä mutisin. Hän väitti vastaan:

— Ei, ei, Ganimardilla on hieno vainu, hän on toisinaan

nerokaskin.
 — Nerokaskin!

— Niin juuri. Tuo haastattelu esimerkiksi on mestariteko. Se

ensiksi ilmaisee englantilaisen kilpailijani saapuvan, voidakseni olla
varuillani ja tehdäkseni hänen tehtävänsä vaikeammaksi. Toiseksi
hän määrää tarkoin kohdan, johon asti hän on vienyt asian, jotta
Sherlock Holmes ei saisi nauttia muuta kuin omien töittensä
hedelmät. Se on julkista sotaa.

— Olkoon kuinka tahansa, nyt teillä on kaksi vastustajaa

niskassanne, ja millaiset vastustajat!

— No, toinen ei tule kysymykseen.

— Ja toinen?

— Holmes? Myönnän kyllä, että hän on vaarallinen. Mutta juuri se

kiihottaa minua ja siksi näette minun olevan näin hyvällä tuulella.
Ensiksikin se hivelee itserakkauttani: ihmisten mielestä vain kuuluisa
englantilainen voi saada voiton minusta. Sitä paitsi ajatelkaa, kuinka
minunlaiseni taistelija riemuitsee saadessaan taistella Sherlock
Holmesin kanssa. Sitä paitsi minun täytyy panna kaikki voimani
liikkeelle, sillä minä tunnen hänet, hän ei väisty tuumaakaan.

— Hän on etevä.

— Hyvin etevä. Salapoliisien joukossa en usko koskaan olleen tai

tulevan olemaan hänen kaltaistaan. Minulla on se etu puolellani, että
hän hyökkää ja minä puolustaudun. Minun osani on helpompi. Sitä
paitsi…

Hän hymyili tuskin huomattavasti, ja lopetti lauseensa:

 — Sitä paitsi minä tunnen hänen taistelutapansa, mutta hän ei
minun. Ja minä olen säästänyt häntä varten muutamia erikoisia
temppuja, jotka panevat hänet miettimään.

Hän naputteli pöytään sormillaan, ja lausui lyhyitä lauseita

ihastuneen näköisenä.

— Arsène Lupin taistelussa Sherlock Holmesia vastaan. Ranska

Englantia vastaan. Vihdoinkin Trafalgarin taistelu kostetaan! Tuo
miesparka, hän ei aavistakaan, että minä olen valmistautunut, ja kun
Lupin saa varoituksen…

Hän vaikeni äkkiä, alkoi kovasti yskiä ja kätki kasvonsa

ruokaliinaan kuten se, joka on saanut palan väärään kurkkuun.

— Leivän muru kai meni väärään kurkkuun? kysyin minä häneltä,

— juokaahan hiukan vettä.

— Ei, ei se ole syynä, sanoi hän tukahtuneella äänellä.

— Vaan mikä?

— Minä tarvitsen raitista ilmaa.

— Tahdotteko, niin avaan ikkunan?

— Ei, minä poistun, nopeasti, antakaa minulle päällystakkini ja

hattuni, minä pakenen.

— Mutta miksi, mitä tämä tietää?

— Katsokaa noita molempia herroja, jotka tulivat juuri sisään,

katsokaahan sitä kookkaampaa, no niin, lähtiessämme, kulkekaa
vasemmalla puolellani, jotta hän ei voi minua nähdä.
 — Hänkö, joka istahtaa taaksemme?

— Niin, persoonallisista syistä olisi se minulle edullisempaa.

Ulkona selitän teille kaikki.

— Mutta kuka hän on?

— Sherlock Holmes.

Hän hillitsi itsensä, ikään kuin peläten omaa levottomuuttaan, laski

lautasliinansa pöydälle, joi lasillisen vettä, ja sanoi minulle hymyillen
aivan entisellä tavallaan:

— Eikö se ole hullua? En minä juuri helposti pelästy, mutta tämä

odottamaton näky…

— Mutta mitä te pelkäätte, eihän kukaan voi tuntea teitä monien

valepukujenne läpi? Minäkin, joka kerta kun teidät tapaan, luulen
seisovani uuden henkilön edessä.

— Hän tuntee minut, sanoi Arsène Lupin. — Hän on nähnyt minut

vain yhden ainoan kerran, mutta minä näin, että kuvani painui hänen
mieleensä koko elinajaksi, ei minun alituisesti muutteleva muotoni,
vaan koko olentoni sellaisena kuin olen. Ja sitä paitsi… ja sitä paitsi…
minä en tätä odottanut. Mikä kummallinen yhteensattuma tässä
pienessä ravintolassa.

— No niin, sanoin minä, — lähdemmekö pois?

— Emme, emme.

— Mitä te aiotte?

— Parasta olisi toimia avoimesti, ilmaista itsensä hänelle…

 — Ettehän toki sitä aio?

— Aion kyllä, sitä paitsi minulle on siitä hyötyä, voin kysellä mitä
hän tietää… kuulkaahan, minä tunnen, että hänen silmänsä painuvat
niskaani, olkapäihini, ja että hän etsii, että hän muistuttelee.

Hän mietti. Minä huomasin ilkikurisen hymyn hänen suupielissään,

ja sitten noudattaen luullakseni enemmän hetken vaikuttimille altista
luonnettaan kuin olojen pakkoa, hän nousi äkkiä, kääntyi ympäri,
kumarsi ja sanoi hyvin iloisesti:

— Mikä sattuma. Kylläpä minulla on hyvä onni… Sallikaa minun

esitellä teille eräs ystäväni…

Hetkisen tai pari englantilainen istui hämmästyneenä paikallaan,

sitten hän teki vaistomaisesti liikkeen valmiina heittäytymään Arsène
Lupinin kimppuun. Tämä nosti päänsä pystyyn:

— Siinä tekisitte väärin… lukuunottamatta sitä, että se ei olisi

kaunista, se olisi aivan hyödytöntä!

Englantilainen kääntyi oikealle ja vasemmalle, kuin apua etsien.

— Ei sekään auttaisi, sanoi Lupin. — Luuletteko sitä paitsi

pystyvänne ottamaan minut kiinni? Ottakaahan toki kaikki leikin
kannalta.

Ei ollut suinkaan helppoa ottaa tällä hetkellä asioita leikin

kannalta. Yhtä kaikki oli luultavaa, että englantilainen piti sitä
viisaimpana, sillä hän nousi puoliksi ja esitteli aivan kylmästi:

— Herra Watson, ystäväni ja työtoverini. Herra Arsène Lupin.

 Watsonin hämmästys herätti riemua. Selällään olevat silmät ja
ammollaan oleva suu olivat keskellä hänen ällistynyttä naamaansa,
jonka iho loisti ja oli kireällä kuin omenan kuori, ja jonka ympärillä
hänen pysty tukkansa ja lyhyt partansa törröttivät kuin paksu ja
rehevä ruoho.

— Watson, te ette kylliksi salaa hämmästystänne maailman

luonnollisimpien tapausten edessä, lausui Sherlock Holmes hiukan
pilkallisesti.

Watson sopersi:

— Miksi ette vangitse häntä?

— Te ette ole huomannut, Watson, että tämä herra seisoo oven ja

minun välissä, ja kahden askeleen päässä ovesta. Minä ennättäisin
tuskin liikuttaa pikkusormeanikaan, kun hän olisi jo ovesta ulkona.

— Ei sen tarvitse olla esteenä, sanoi Lupin.

Hän kiersi pöydän ja istuutui siten, että englantilainen oli hänen ja

oven välissä. Siten hän tuli riippuvaiseksi toisesta.

Watson katsoi Holmesiin ikään kuin kysyen, oliko hänellä oikeutta

ihailla tätä uhkarohkeata tekoa. Englantilaisen kasvot eivät ilmaisseet
mitään. Mutta hetkisen kuluttua hän huusi:

— Viinuri!

Viinuri riensi hänen luokseen. Holmes sanoi:

— Olutta, whiskya ja soodaa.

 Rauha oli solmittu… siksi kunnes toisin päätettäisiin. Vähän sen
jälkeen, me neljä istuimme saman pöydän ääressä ja keskustelimme
rauhallisesti.

*****

Sherlock Holmes oli mies, jollaista ei tapaa joka päivä. Hän on

noin viisikymmenvuotias ja muistutti kunnon porvaria, joka oli
viettänyt koko ikänsä kirjoituspöytänsä ääressä tilikirjoja
tarkastamassa. Häntä ei mikään erottanut kunnianarvoisesta
Lontoon asukkaasta, ei hänen punertava poskipartansa, ei sileäksi
ajeltu leukansa, ei hiukan kömpelö ulkomuotonsa — ei mikään muu
kuin hänen pelottavan terävät, vilkkaat ja läpitunkevat silmänsä.

Sitä paitsi hän oli Sherlock Holmes, se tahtoo sanoa ihmeellinen

yhdistelmä aavistuskykyä, terävänäköisyyttä ja nerokkuutta. Luulisi
luonnon huvikseen ottaneen molemmat erikoiset salapoliisityypit,
Edgar Poën Dupinin ja Gaboriuan Lecoqin, muodostaakseen niistä
omalla tavallaan uuden entisiä paremman ja ihmeellisemmän.
Kuullessaan hänen urotöistään, joiden kautta hän oli tullut
kuuluisaksi yli koko maailman, kysyi todellakin itseltään, eikö tuo
Sherlock Holmes ollutkin vain satuolento, mielikuvituksen
synnyttämä henkilö, joka oli syntynyt Conan Doylen tapaisen, suuren
kirjailijan aivoissa.

Heti kun Arsène Lupin kysyi häneltä, kuinka kauan hän tulisi
viipymään, johti Sherlock Holmes keskustelun oikeaan suuntaan.

— Minun viipymiseni riippuu teistä, herra Lupin.

— Oho! huudahti toinen nauraen, — jos se riippuu minusta, niin

pyytäisin teitä jo tänä iltana lähtemään laivalla pois.
 — Tänään olisi se liian varhaista, mutta toivon voivani lähteä
kahdeksan tai kymmenen päivän päästä.

— Onko teillä siis niin kova kiire?

— Minulla on niin paljon asioita selviteltävinä, pankkiryöstö, lady

Ecclestonin ryöstö… Luuletteko, herra Lupin, että viikko on kylliksi?

— Aivan kylliksi, jos te tahdotte päästä selville sinisen timantin

kaksoisjutusta. Sitä paitsi riittää se aika minulle ryhtyä varokeinoihin
siltä varalta, että te tuon jutun kautta saavuttaisitte etuja, jotka ovat
vaarallisia minun turvallisuudelleni.

— No niin, sanoi englantilainen, — juuri nuo edut aion hankkia

itselleni kahdeksassa päivässä.

— Ja vangita minut yhdentenätoista ehkä?

— Kymmenentenä viimeistään.

Lupin mietti ja sanoi kohottaen päätään:

— Hyvin vaikeaa, hyvin vaikeaa…

— Vaikeaa, kyllä, mutta aivan varmaan mahdollista.

— Ehdottomasti varmaan, sanoi Watson, ikään kuin hän selvästi

olisi nähnyt sen pitkän toimenpidesarjan, joka veisi hänen
työtoverinsa toivottuun tulokseen.

Sherlock Holmes hymyili:

— Watson tietää sen, hän voi sen teille todistaa. Ja hän jatkoi:
 — On kyllä totta, että minulla ei ole kaikkia valtteja käsissäni, sillä
on kysymyksessä muutaman kuukauden vanhat asiat. Minulta
puuttuu pohja, ne pienet johtolangat, joihin olen tottunut nojaamaan
tutkimukseni.

— Kuten likapilkut ja savukkeen tuhka, lausui Watson erikoisella

painolla.

— Mutta paitsi herra Ganimardin tekemiä arvokkaita päätelmiä, on

minulla käytettävänäni kaikki tästä asiasta kirjoitetut lehtikirjoitukset,
kaikki muistiin merkityt huomiot, ja luonnollisena seurauksena
kaikesta tästä, muutamia tätä asiaa koskevia persoonallisia ajatuksia.

— Mietteitä, jotka meissä ovat syntyneet tarkastelun ja

johtopäätösten kautta, lisäsi Watson nerokkaasti.

— Onko epähienoa, kysyi Arsène Lupin sillä suopealla äänellä, jota

hän käytti puhellessaan Holmesin kanssa, — onko epähienoa kysyä
teiltä, mikä on teidän yleinen mielipiteenne tästä asiasta?

Oli todella sangen jännittävää katsella näitä molempia miehiä

yhdessä, nojautumassa kyynärpäillään pöytään keskustellen
vakavasti ja perinpohjaisesti ikään kuin heillä olisi ollut vaikea pulma
selviteltävänä tai sovittavana jostain riitakysymyksestä. Siinä piili
myöskin hyvin paljon ivaa, josta molemmat suuresti nauttivat
taiteilijoina omalla alallaan. Watson nautti siitä aivan ylenmäärin.

Sherlock täytti hitaasti piippunsa, sytytti sen ja lausui näin:

— Minun mielestäni on tämä juttu tavattoman paljon

yksinkertaisempi kuin miltä se ensi alussa näyttää.
 — Paljon yksinkertaisempi todellakin, vakuutti Watson uskollisena
kaikuna.

— Minä sanoin juttu, sillä minun mielestäni on olemassa vain yksi

ainoa. Parooni d'Hautrecin kuolema, sormusjuttu, ja, älkäämme sitä
unohtako arpalipun 514 — sarja 23:n salaisuus, eivät ole muuta kuin
eri puolia jutusta, jota voisi kutsua vaaleatukkaisen naisen
arvoitukseksi. Minun mielestäni on siis vain löydettävä se side, joka
yhdistää nämä saman asian kolme eri osaa, se seikka, joka ilmaisee
näissä kolmessa kohdassa käytetyn järjestelmän. Ganimard, jonka
arvostelu on hiukan pintapuolinen, näkee tämän yhtenäisyyden
katoamisessa, tuossa keinossa voida tulla ja mennä kenenkään
näkemättä. Tämä ihmeen sekaantuminen juttuun ei minua miellytä.

— Siis?

— Siis, minun mielestäni, selitti Holmes suoraan, — on näille

kolmelle seikkailulle kuvaavinta se, että te johdatte tapahtumat
alueelle, jonka taitavasti olette itse valinnut. Teidän puoleltanne
ilmenee siinä, ei yksinään valmistelusuunnitelma, vaan
välttämättömyys, jota ilman aikeenne eivät onnistuisi.

— Voitteko lähemmin määritellä ajatuksenne?

— Voin kyllä. Heti kun aloititte riitanne herra Gerboisin kanssa, niin
eikö ollut päivänselvää, että te valitsitte herra Detinanin asunnon
siksi välttämättömäksi paikaksi, jossa voisitte tavata toisenne.
Mikään muu paikka ei teidän mielestänne voisi olla niin varma, että
te voisitte panna siellä toimeen sanokaamme julkisen tapaamisen
vaaleatukkaisen naisen ja neiti Gerboisin kanssa.

— Professorin tyttären kanssa, selitti Watson.

 — Nyt puhukaamme sinisestä timantista. Olitteko koettanut saada
sitä käsiinne niin kauan kuin paroni d'Hautrec sen omisti? Ette. Mutta
kun paroni peri veljensä asunnon niin kuusi kuukautta myöhemmin
ilmestyi Antoinette Bréhat ja silloin tapahtui ensimmäinen yritys.
Timantti pääsi käsistänne, ja huutokauppa pantiin toimeen suurella
kohulla. Oliko tämä myynti vapaa? Oliko rikas amerikkalainen varma
siitä, että hän saisi tuon helmen käsiinsä? Ei ollut. Sillä hetkellä kun
pankkiiri Herschmann oli sen saamaisillaan, lähetti eräs nainen
hänelle uhkauskirjeen, ja tuon naisen edeltäpäin valmistama,
yllyttämä kreivitär Crozon osti timantin. Katosiko se heti? Ei: teillä ei
ollut keinoja siihen. Siis, väliaika. Mutta kreivitär asettui linnaansa
asumaan. Sitä juuri te odotitte. Sormus katosi.

— Ilmestyäkseen kaikeksi kummaksi konsuli Bleichenin

hammastahnaan, huomautti Lupin.

— Joutavia, huudahti Sherlock, naputtaen pöytään, — minulle ei

pidä kertoa sellaisia typeryyksiä. Tyhmät voivat mennä sellaiseen
ansaan, mutta ei sellainen vanha kettu kuin minä olen.

— Mitä se tietää?

— Se tietää, että…

Holmes vaikeni hetkeksi ikään kuin tehostaakseen vaikutelmaa.

Lopulta hän lausui:

— Se sininen helmi, joka löydettiin hammastahnasta, oli väärä.

Oikea on teidän hallussanne.

Arsène Lupin oli hetkisen vaiti, mutta sitten hän sanoi aivan
yksinkertaisesti katsoen suoraan englantilaiseen:
 — Te olette terävä mies.

— Terävä mies, eikö olekin, alleviivasi Watson aivan suunniltaan

ihastuksesta.

— Niin, vakuutti Lupin, — kaikki selviää, kaikki saa oikean

muotonsa. Ei ainoakaan tutkintotuomari, ei ainoakaan
sanomalehtimies, jotka ovat tätä asiaa pohtineet, ole päässyt noin
pitkälle totuutta kohden. Tämä on ihmeellinen todistus teidän
vaistostanne ja loogisuudestanne.

— Mitä vielä! sanoi englantilainen mielissään saadessaan kuulla

tunnustuksen sellaisen tuntijan suusta, — ei tarvinnut muuta kuin
miettiä asiaa.

— Täytyi osata miettiä, ja niin harvat sitä osaavat! Mutta nyt kun
olettamusten alue on ahtaampi ja maaperä on valmistettu…

— No niin, nyt minun ei tarvitse muuta kuin tietää, miksi nuo

kolme seikkailua ovat tapahtuneet sellaisissa paikoissa kuin
Clapeyron-katu 25, Henri-Martin-puistokatu 134 ja Crozonin linna.
Siinä on koko solmu. Loppu on vain jonnin joutavaa, kuin arvoitusten
selittely lapsille. Eikö se ole teidänkin mielipiteenne?

— Se on minun mielipiteeni.

— Siinä tapauksessa, herra Lupin, on minun turhaa sanoa

uudelleen, että kymmenen päivän päästä tehtäväni on täytetty?

— Niin, kymmenessä päivässä saatte koko totuuden selville.

— Ja te olette vankina.
 — En.

— Ettekö?

— Jotta minä joutuisin vangiksi, täytyisi tapahtua niin

mahdottomia asioita, kokonainen sarja niin hämmästyttäviä
tapahtumia, että minä en voi otaksuakaan sellaista mahdollisuutta.

— Sen, mitä eivät olosuhteet eivätkä epäsuotuisat sattumat voi

saada aikaan, sen voi mies omalla tahdollaan ja päättäväisyydellään
luoda, herra Lupin.

— Mutta jos toisen tahto ja päättäväisyys luovat tälle aikeelle

voittamattomia esteitä, herra Holmes.

— Ei löydy voittamattomia esteitä, herra Lupin.

Katse, jonka he loivat toisiinsa, oli syvä, se ei kumminkaan puolin

ollut uhmaileva, mutta tyyni ja rohkea. Se oli kuin kahden miekan
kalskahdus toisiinsa. Se helähti kirkkaasti ja suorasti.

— Hyvä on, huudahti Lupin, — sepä on jotain! Vastustaja, mutta

se onkin harvinainen lintu, itse Sherlock Holmes. Tästä tulee
hauskaa.

— Ettekö pelkää? kysyi Watson.

— Melkein, herra Watson, — ja todistuksena siitä on se, että minä

riennän valmistamaan turvapaikkaa itselleni. Muuten voin joutua
ansaan. Sanommeko siis kymmenen päivän päästä, herra Holmes?

— Kymmenen päivän. Tänään on sunnuntai. Keskiviikosta viikko,

ja kaikki on lopussa!
 — Ja minä istun lukkojen takana?

— Epäilemättä.

— Hitto vieköön! Minä kun jo iloitsin rauhallisesta elämästäni.

Poissa kaikki ikävyydet, liike jatkumassa rauhallisesti, poliisi loitolla ja
lohdutuksenani se tieto, että koko maailman sympatia ympäröi
minua. Kaikki se saa nyt muuttua! Se on rahan nurja puoli. Kaunista
ilmaa seuraa sade. Nyt on nauru loppunut. Hyvästi!

— Pitäkää kiirettä, sanoi Watson, huolissaan henkilön puolesta,

jota Holmes niin kunnioittavasti kohteli, — älkää heittäkö
minuuttiakaan hukkaan.

— En minuuttiakaan herra Watson, minä sanon vain kuinka

onnellinen olen saadessani tavata teidät, ja kuinka minä kadehdin
mestaria, jolla on niin tunnollinen apulainen kuin te olette.

He kumarsivat kohteliaasti toisilleen kuin kaksintaistelupaikalla

kaksi vastustajaa, joita ei mikään viha erota, mutta jotka kohtalo
pakottaa taistelemaan säälimättä keskenään. Ja Lupin tarttui
käsivarteeni ja veti minut kadulle.

— Mitä tästä sanotte? Siinäpä ateria, jonka yksityiskohdat tekevät

hyvän vaikutuksen siinä kirjoittamassanne elämäkerrassani.

Hän sulki ravintolan oven ja seisahtui muutaman askeleen päähän

siitä:

— Poltatteko?

— En, mutta ettehän tekään luullakseni.

 — En minäkään.

Hän sytytti savukkeen tulitikulla, jota hän heilutti useaan kertaan

saadakseen sen sammumaan. Mutta heti hän heitti savukkeen pois,
juoksi kadun yli ja tapasi kaksi miestä, jotka astuivat varjosta esiin
aivan kuin merkin saatuaan. Hän puheli heidän kanssaan muutaman
minuutin ajan vastakkaisen puolen katukäytävällä, palasi sitten
minun luokseni.

— Minä pyydän anteeksi, tuo kirottu Holmes antaa minulle lankoja

katkottaviksi. Mutta, minä vannon, ettei hän vielä ole voittanut
Lupinia. Senkin lurjus, hän saa nähdä, kenen kanssa hän on
tekemisissä. Näkemiin, Watson oli oikeassa, minulla ei ole
hetkeäkään hukattavana.

Hän poistui nopeasti.

Täten loppui tämä omituinen ilta, tai ainakin osa tästä illasta,
johon minä olin ottanut osaa. Sillä seuraavien tuntien kuluessa sattui
tapauksia, joista minä, toisten tähän ateriaan osallistuneiden
henkilöiden avulla, olen tilaisuudessa antamaan täyden selostuksen.

*****

Samalla hetkellä kun Lupin erosi minusta, Sherlock Holmes katsoi

kelloaan ja nousi vuorostaan.

— Kahtakymmentä vaille yhdeksän. Kello yhdeksän piti minun

tavata kreivi ja kreivitär asemalla.

— Siis matkaan! huudahti Watson ryypäten perätysten kaksi

lasillista whiskya.
 He poistuivat.

— Watson, älkää katsoko taaksenne! Meitä ehkä seurataan; sen

vuoksi menetelkäämme siten kuin kaikki se olisi meille
yhdentekevää. Kuulkaahan, Watson, sanokaahan minulle
mielipiteenne: miksi Lupin oli tuossa ravintolassa?

Watson ei viivytellyt vastausta.

— Syödäkseen.

— Watson, mitä enemmän me työskentelemme yhdessä, sitä

selvemmin huomaan teidän edistyvän. Te toden totta aivan
hämmästytätte minua.

Pimeässä Watson punastui mielihyvästä, ja Holmes jatkoi:

— Syödäkseen, varmaankin, ja sitten luultavasti ottaakseen

selville, menenkö todellakin Crozonien luo, kuten Ganimard ilmoitti
haastattelussaan. Minä menen siis sinne, jotta en pahoittaisi hänen
mieltään. Mutta kun minun täytyy hänen suhteensa voittaa aikaa,
niin en menekään.

— Ah! sanoi Watson ällistyneenä.

— Te, ystäväiseni, juoskaa tätä katua pitkin, ottakaa ajuri, kaksi

kolme ajuria. Palatkaa myöhemmin etsimään matkatavaroita, jotka
jätimme asemalle, ja täyttä laukkaa l'Elysée-Palace-hotelliin.

— l'Elysée-Palace-hotelliin?

— Te tilaatte itsellenne huoneen, jonne menette levolle ja nukutte

kädet nyrkissä odottaen minun määräyksiäni.
 Watson lähti ylpeillen hänelle uskotusta tehtävästä. Sherlock
Holmes otti matkalippunsa ja meni Amiensin pikajunaan, jossa kreivi
ja kreivitär jo häntä odottivat.

Hän kumarsi vain heille, sytytti uuden piipun, ja tupakoi

rauhallisesti seisoen vaunun käytävässä.

Juna lähti liikkeelle. Kymmenen minuutin päästä hän tuli istumaan

kreivittären viereen ja sanoi hänelle:

— Onhan teillä sormuksenne?

— On.

— Suvaitkaa lainata sitä minulle. Hän otti sen käteensä ja tarkasti

sitä.

— Minä arvasin oikein, timantti on keinotekoinen.

— Timantti keinotekoinen?

— Se on uusi keino. Timanttihiekkaa kuumennetaan hyvin kovassa

kuumuudessa, jolloin se saadaan sulamaan, silloin ei tarvitse muuta
kuin koota se yhdeksi kiveksi.

— Mitä! Minun timanttinihan on oikea.

— Tiedän, on kyllä, mutta tämä ei ole teidän.

— Missä minun sitten on?

— Arsène Lupinin hallussa.

— Siis tämä?
 — Tämä on pantu teidän timanttienne sijaan ja pistetty herra
Bleichenin hammas tahnaputkeen, josta te sen löysitte.

— Tämä on siis väärä.

— Aivan varmasti.

Hämmästyneenä, hämillään kreivitär vaikeni, ja hänen miehensä

käänteli epäuskoisena jalokiveä. Lopulta kreivitär sopersi:

— Onko se mahdollista! Mutta miksei sitä ole aivan yksinkertaisesti

varastettu? Ja miten se on anastettu?

— Siitä juuri minä tahdon päästä selville.

— Crozonin linnassa?

— Ei, minä nousen junasta Creilissä, ja palaan Pariisiin. Siellä minä

taistelen Arsène Lupinin kanssa. Sopisihan siihen mikä muu paikka
tahansa, mutta edullisinta on, että Lupin uskoo minun olevan
matkoilla.

— Mutta…

— Mitäkö teihin tulee, hyvä rouva, pääasia on teidän timanttinne,

eikö niin?

— Niin.

— No niin, olkaa rauhassa. Minä annoin äsken lupauksen jota on

paljon vaikeampi pitää. Luottakaa Sherlock Holmesiin, minä annan
teille oikean timanttinne takaisin.
 Juna hiljensi kulkuaan. Hän pisti väärän timantin taskuunsa ja
avasi oven. Kreivi huudahti:

— Mutta tehän nousette junasta väärälle puolelle!

— Siten Lupin, jos hän antaa vartioida minua, kadottaa jälkeni.

Hyvästi.

Eräs aseman virkamies koetti turhaan estää häntä. Englantilainen

suuntasi kulkunsa asemapäällikön työhuonetta kohden.
Viisikymmentä minuuttia myöhemmin hän hyppäsi junaan, joka toi
hänet Pariisin vähää ennen puoliyötä.

Hän juoksi asemahuoneen läpi, meni ravintolaan, poistui toisesta

ovesta ja riensi ajoneuvoihin.

— Clapeyron-katu.

Päästyään varmuuteen siitä, ettei häntä seurattu, hän pysäytti

ajurin kadun päässä ja alkoi tarkkaan tutkia herra Detinanin taloa ja
molempia viereisiä taloja. Askelilla hän mittaili muutamia etäisyyksiä
ja teki muistiinpanoja taskukirjaansa.

— Ajuri, Henri-Martin-puistokatu.

Puistokadun ja Pompe-kadun kulmassa hän maksoi ajurille, kulki

katukäytävää pitkin numeron 134 kohdalle asti, ja ryhtyi tekemään
samoja mittauksia paroni d'Hautrecin entisen asunnon ja sen
vieressä olevien molempien talojen suhteen, mittaillen talojen
päädyt, ja laskien kuinka leveitä olivat ne pienet puutarhat, jotka
olivat talojen edessä.
 Puistokatu oli autio ja hyvin pimeä nelinkertaisten puurivien
suojassa, joiden välistä siellä täällä kaasulyhty koetti turhaan taistella
synkkää pimeyttä vastaan. Eräs lyhty loi heikkoa valoaan yhteen
osaan palatsia, ja Holmes näki ilmoitustaulun, jossa luki
"vuokrattavana", riippuvan aitauksessa, molemmat hoitamattomat
puistokäytävät, jotka rajoittivat ruohokentän, ja asumattoman talon
suuret, tyhjät ikkunat.

— Se on totta, hän ajatteli, — paronin kuoltua ei kukaan ole

asunut täällä… Jospa minä voisin päästä sinne sisään ja tehdä
pienen tarkastuksen.

Tuskin tämä ajatus oli herännyt hänessä, kun hän jo tahtoi sen
toteuttaakin. Mutta miten? Aitaus oli niin korkea että oli mahdotonta
ajatellakaan kiivetä sen yli; hän otti taskustaan sähkölampun ja
tiirikan, jotka aina olivat hänen taskussaan. Suureksi
hämmästyksekseen hän huomasi, että portin toinen puolisko oli
raollaan. Hän pujahti puutarhaan huolellisesti varoen sulkemasta
porttia. Mutta hän ei vielä ollut astunut kolmeakaan askelta kun hän
seisahtui. Eräästä toisen kerroksen ikkunasta välähti valo.

Ja valo kulki toisen ja kolmannen ikkunan ohi, hän ei voinut nähdä

muuta kuin varjon, joka kulki huoneen seinillä. Ja toisesta
kerroksesta valo laskeutui alakertaan ja kulki kauan huoneesta
huoneeseen.

— Kuka perhana saattaa kulkea yhden aikaan yöllä talossa, jossa

paroni d'Hautrec murhattiin? kyseli Sherlock itseltään hyvin
uteliaana.

Yhdellä ainoalla keinolla hän voisi sen saada tietää, menemällä itse
taloon. Hän ei siekaillut. Mutta sillä hetkellä kun hän päästäkseen
nurmikon poikitse kulki katulyhdyn valaiseman alueen yli, mies
varmaankin näki hänet, sillä hän sammutti valon eikä Sherlock
Holmes enää nähnyt häntä.

Hiljaa nojasi hän ruohikolle johtavaan oveen. Sekin oli auki. Kun
hän ei kuullut mitään kolinaa, hän uskalsi astua pimeässä eteenpäin,
tapasi porraskaiteen pään ja nousi portaita ylös. Sama hiljaisuus,
sama pimeys vallitsi kaikkialla.

Päästyään seuraavaan kerrokseen hän astui erääseen huoneeseen

ja lähestyi ikkunaa, josta kalpea yövalo tuli huoneeseen. Silloin hän
huomasi ulkona miehen, joka epäilemättä oli kulkenut toisia portaita
alas ja poistunut toisesta ovesta, pujahtavan vasemmalle molempia
puutarhoja erottavan muurin vieressä kasvavaan pensaikkoon.

— Perhana, huudahti Holmes, — hän pujahtaa käsistäni!

Hän kompuroi portaita alas ja kulki nurmikon poikki estääkseen

miestä poistumasta. Mutta hän ei nähnyt enää ketään ja hän tarvitsi
muutamia sekunteja erottaakseen pensaikosta muita mustemman
kohdan, joka hiukan liikahteli.

Englantilainen mietti. Miksei tuo olento ollut koettanut paeta silloin

kun hän olisi niin helposti voinut sen tehdä? Jäikö hän puolestaan
vakoilemaan kutsumatonta vierasta, joka oli häirinnyt häntä hänen
salaperäisissä puuhissaan?

— Missään tapauksessa se ei ole Lupin, Lupin olisi taitavampi. Se

on joku, joka kuuluu hänen joukkioonsa.

Kului pitkiä minuutteja. Sherlock ei liikahtanut vaan tuijotti häntä

vaanivaan vastustajaan. Mutta kun ei vastustaja enää liikahtanut ja
kun englantilainen ei tuhlannut koskaan aikaa joutenoloon, tarkasti
hän toimiko hänen revolverinsa liipaisin, otti tikarinsa tupestaan ja
astui suoraan vihollista kohti osoittaen siten tuota kylmää
uhkarohkeutta ja vaaran halveksimista, joka hänet teki niin
pelottavaksi.

Kuului rasahdus: tuo toinen veti revolverinsa vireeseen. Sherlock

syöksyi äkkiä pensaikkoon. Toisella ei ollut aikaa liikahtaakaan:
englantilainen oli jo hänen kimpussaan. Syttyi vimmattu,
epätoivoinen taistelu, jonka aikana Sherlock arvasi tuon toisen
ponnistelevan saadakseen puukkonsa esille. Mutta Holmes tahtoi
aivan mielettömällä kiihkolla saada heti ensi hetkenä käsiinsä Arsène
Lupinin kätyrin, ja tunsi sen vuoksi voimansa vastustamattomiksi.
Hän kaatoi vastustajansa maahan, lepäsi koko painollaan hänen
päällään ja pakotti hänet aivan liikkumattomana makaamaan
pusertamalla sormillaan kuten pihdeillä tuon onnettoman kurkkua,
vapaalla kädellään hän etsi sähkölamppuaan, painoi sitä ja valaisi
vangitun kasvoja.

— Watson! huudahti hän kauhistuneena.

— Sherlock Holmes! sopersi puoliksi tukehtuneen koriseva ääni.

*****

Molemmat makasivat kauan maassa sanaakaan vaihtamatta,

molemmat aivan lamassa. Tuulen viima liikutti hiukan lehtiä. Holmes
ei liikahtanutkaan, hänen sormensa puristivat yhä vielä Watsonin
kurkkua, joka korisi yhä heikommin.

Ja äkkiä sai suuttumus Sherlockissa vallan, hän irrotti kätensä,

mutta tarttui toisen olkapäihin ja ravisti vimmatusti häntä.
 — Mitä te täällä teette? Vastatkaa… Olenko minä käskenyt teitä
piiloutumaan pensastoihin ja vakoilemaan minua?

— Vakoilemaan teitä, huokasi Watson, — enhän minä tietänyt

teidän olevan täällä.

— Miksi sitten tulitte? Mitä te täällä teette? Teidänhän piti mennä

nukkumaan.

— Minä olin nukkumassa.

— Olisitte sitten nukkunut!

— Minä nukuin.

— Te ette olisi saanut herätä!

— Teidän kirjeenne…

— Minun kirjeenikö?

— Niin, jonka kaupunginlähetti toi teiltä minulle hotelliin.

— Minultako? Oletteko hullu?

— Mutta se on totta!

— Missä se kirje on?

Watson ojensi hänelle kirjeen. Lyhdyn valossa hän luki

hämmästyksekseen:

"Watson, ylös vuoteesta ja rientäkää Henri-Martin-

puistokadulle. Talo on autio. Astukaa sisään, tarkastakaa,
 laatikaa tarkka pohjapiirustus ja palatkaa nukkumaan.
Sherlock Holmes."

— Minä mittailin juuri parhaillaan huoneita, sanoi Watson, — kun

näin varjon puutarhassa. Ainoa ajatukseni oli…

— Saada tuo varjo käsiinne. Se oli hyvä ajatus… Mutta,

katsokaahan, sanoi Holmes auttaen toveriaan nousemaan ja lähtien
hänen kanssaan liikkeelle, — ensi kerralla, Watson, kun saatte
kirjeen minulta, niin ottakaa ensin selko siitä, että kirje ei ole
väärennetty.

— Mutta, sanoi Watson, joka alkoi käsittää asian oikean laidan, —

kirje ei ollutkaan teidän kirjoittamanne?

— Ei!

— Kenenkä sitten?

— Arsène Lupinin.

— Mutta miksi se kirjoitettiin?

— Sitä en tiedä, ja juuri se tekeekin minut levottomaksi. Miksi

hitossa hän vaivasi teitä? Jos olisi kysymys minusta, niin
ymmärtäisin, mutta kysymys onkin vain teistä. Ja minä kysyn, missä
tarkoituksessa?

— Minulla on kiire takaisin hotelliin.

— Niin minullakin, Watson.

He olivat portin luona. Watson, joka kulki edellä tarttui

lukkorautaan ja veti.
 — Kas, tekö suljitte portin?

— En suinkaan, minä jätin portin raolleen.

— Mutta…

Sherlock veti vuorostaan ja sitten kiukuissaan hyökkäsi lukkoon

käsiksi. Hän kirosi.

— Hiisi vieköön, se on suljettu, lukossa!

Hän ravisti kaikin voimin porttia, sitten huomattuaan

ponnistuksensa turhiksi, hän antoi käsivarsiensa vaipua alas ja sanoi
purren hampaitaan:

— Nyt minä ymmärrän, tämä on hänen työtään! Hän arvasi, että

minä nousisin junasta Creilin luona, ja hän valmisti minulle täällä
pienen hiirenloukun siinä tapauksessa, että vielä tänä iltana tulisin
tutkimaan. Kohteliaana on hän kaupan päälliseksi lähettänyt minulle
vankeustoverin. Tämän on hän tehnyt, jotta kadottaisin yhden
päivän, ja todistaakseen minulle, että olisi parempi, kun pitäisin
huolta vain omista asioistani.

— Se tahtoo sanoa, että me olemme hänen vankejaan.

— Tepä sen sanoitte. Sherlock Holmes ja Watson ovat Arsène

Lupinin vankeina. Seikkailu alkaa hauskalla tavalla. Mutta ei, mutta
ei, se ei ole mahdollista.

Käsi laskeutui hänen olalleen, Watsonin käsi.

— Tuolla ylhäällä, katsokaa tuonne ylös, valoa! Erääseen toisen

kerroksen ikkunaan ilmestyi todellakin valoa.
 He riensivät molemmat juoksujalkaa eteenpäin, kumpikin omia
portaitaan kohden ja saapuivat yhtaikaa valaistun huoneen ovelle.
Keskellä huonetta paloi kynttilänpätkä. Sen vieressä oli kori, ja tästä
korista pisti esiin pullon kaula, kanan koipi ja puolikas leipää.

Holmes purskahti nauruun.

— Mainiota, meille tarjotaan illallista. Tämä on oikea lumottu linna.

Oikea satulinna. Älkää Watson näyttäkö niin synkältä kuin olisitte
hautajaisissa. Tämä on hyvin hullunkurista.

— Oletteko varma siitä, että tämä on hullunkurista? huomautti

Watson synkän näköisenä.

— Olenko varma siitä, huudahti Holmes, mutta hänen iloisuutensa

oli liiaksi meluavaa tuntuakseen luonnolliselta, — se tahtoo sanoa,
etten koskaan ole nähnyt näin hullunkurista. Tämä on sangen
koomillista! Tuo Arsène Lupin on verraton. Hän pitää meitä
pilkkanaan, mutta niin hauskalla tavalla! Minä en vaihtaisi paikkaani
tässä juhlassa maailman kaikkiin aarteisiin. Watson, vanha ystäväni,
te tuotatte minulle surua. Olisinko erehtynyt teistä, eikö teillä
olisikaan tuota luonteen suuruutta, joka auttaa kantamaan
vastoinkäymisiä. Mitä te valitatte? Tällä hetkellä voisi puukkoni olla
kurkussanne, tai teidän puukkonne minun kurkussani, sillä sitähän te
tavoititte, hyvä ystävä.

Hänen onnistui iloisuudellaan ja ivallaan saada Watson-parka

elpymään ja ottamaan viipaleen kanaa ja lasillisen viiniä. Mutta kun
kynttilä oli palanut, kun heidän täytyi nukkuakseen oikaista
permannolle ja pitää seinää tyynynä niin heidän asemansa
tuskallinen ja naurettava puoli ilmeni heille selvästi. Ja he vaipuivat
levottomana uneen.
 Aamulla Watson heräsi keho jäykkänä ja vilusta väristen.
Varovainen liikunta herätti hänen huomiotaan: Sherlock Holmes oli
polvillaan ja tarkasti kumarassa suurennuslasin avulla lattialla olevaa
tomua ja näki valkoisella liidulla kirjoitettuja, melkein hävinneitä
numeroita. Hän kirjoitti ne muistikirjaan.

Watsonin seurassa, jota tämä toimi erikoisesti innostutti, hän

tarkasti jokaisen huoneen, ja kahdesta muusta huoneesta hän löysi
samanlaisia numeroita. Hän löysi myös kaksi ympyrää
tammilaudoituksessa, nuolen marmorilaatasta, ja neljä numeroa
neljästä porrasaskelmasta.

Hetken kuluttua Watson sanoi hänelle:

— Ovatko numerot oikeita?

— Oikeita, en tiedä, vastasi Sherlock, joka tällaisten löytöjen

vuoksi oli jälleen tullut hyvälle tuulelle, — joka tapauksessa ne
merkitsevät jotain.

— Jotain aivan selvää, sanoi Watson, — ne ilmoittavat kuinka

monta laattaa on lattiassa.

— Ah!

— Niin. Mitä ympyröihin tulee, niin ne merkitsevät, että laudoitus

on ontto, kuten voitte tarkastaa, ja nuoli on suunnattu sinnepäin,
jossa keittiöstä tuleva ruokahissi on.

Sherlock Holmes katsahti ihmetellen häneen.

— Niinkö! Mutta, ystäväni, miten sen tiedätte? Teidän

älykkyytenne saa minut melkein häpeämään.
 — Onhan se niin helppoa tietää, sanoi Watson, ilosta mahtavana,
— minähän nuo merkit kirjoitin eilen seuratessani teidän… tai
oikeammin Arsène Lupinin antamia määräyksiä, koska teidän
nimissänne tullut kirje olikin hänen kirjoittamansa.

Watson oli tällä hetkellä suuremmassa vaarassa kuin taistellessaan

Holmesin kanssa pensaikossa, sillä Holmesin teki hurjasti mieli
kuristaa hänet. Mutta hän hillitsi itsensä, hänen kasvoilleen levisi
irvistys, joka koetti olla hymyily ja hän sanoi:

— Hyvä on, hyvä on, te olette toiminut mainiosti ja se auttaa

meitä paljon eteenpäin. Onko teidän ihailtava tutkimis- ja
huomiokykynne kohdistunut muihin seikkoihin? Minä käyttäisin
saavutetut tulokset hyväkseni.

— Ei, minä en ole päässyt sen pitemmälle.

— Mikä vahinko! Alku oli niin lupaava. Mutta koska asian laita on
näin, niin meillä ei ole muuta tehtävää kuin poistua.

— Poistua! Ja miten?

— Siten kuin kunniallisten ihmisten tapana on: oven kautta.

— Se on suljettu.

— Avataan se.

— Kuka sen tekee?

— Olkaa niin hyvä ja kutsukaa tänne nuo kaksi poliisia, jotka

kävelevät puistokadulla.

— Mutta…
 — Mutta mitä?

— Se on niin nöyryyttävää. Mitä ihmiset sanovat kuullessaan, että

Sherlock Holmes ja minä Watson olemme olleet Arsène Lupinin
vankina.

— Minkä me sille voimme, hyvä ystävä, ihmiset nauravat niin, että

pitelevät kylkiään, vastasi Sherlock käheällä äänellä väännellen
kasvojaan. — Mutta emmehän me voi valita tätä taloa
asunnoksemme.

— Ettekö te yritä mitään?

— En.

— Mutta eihän mies, joka toi meille ruokakorin, kulkenut

puutarhan kautta tullessaan eikä mennessään. Täällä on siis
toinenkin tie ulos. Etsikäämme sitä, eikä meidän tarvitse turvautua
poliiseihin.

— Oivasti ajateltu. Mutta te unohdatte, että koko Pariisin

poliisilaitos on etsinyt kuusi kuukautta tuota käytävää ja että minäkin
teidän nukkuessanne olen tarkastanut talon ylhäältä alas asti. Hyvä
Watson, Arsène Lupin on lintu, jollaisia me emme ole tottuneet
pyydystämään. Hän ei jätä mitään jälkiä.

*****

Kello yksitoista Sherlock Holmes ja Watson pääsivät vapaiksi… ja

heidät vietiin lähimmälle poliisiasemalle, jossa komisario, ensin
ankarasti kyseltyään heiltä, päästi heidät vapaaksi surkutellen heitä
suuresti.
 — Minä olen aivan onneton siitä, mitä on tapahtunut. Teillä
mahtaa olla huonot ajatukset ranskalaisten vieraanvaraisuudesta.
Hyvä Jumala, millaisen yön te olette saaneet viettää! Tuo Lupin ei
ole lainkaan hienotunteinen.

He ajoivat l'Elysée-Palace-hotellin luo. Watson pyysi huoneensa

avainta.

Hetkisen etsittyään vastasi portieri hyvin hämmästyneenä:

— Mutta, hyvä herra, tehän olette luopuneet huoneestanne.

— Minä! Ja mitenkä?

— Kirjeellisesti, kirjeessä jonka ystävänne tänä aamuna toi tänne.

— Mikä ystävä?

— Se herra, joka toi tänne kirjeenne. Katsokaa, teidän

käyntikorttinnekin oli sen sisällä. Tässä se onkin.

Watson tarttui siihen. Se oli todellakin hänen käyntikorttinsa ja

kirje oli todellakin hänen käsialallaan kirjoitettu.

— Hyvä Jumala, hän mutisi, — sekin on taas uusi konnankoukku.

Ja hän jatkoi varovaisesti kyselyään:

— Ja matkatavarani?

— Ystävännehän vei ne mukanaan.

— Vai niin, ja te annoitte ne hänelle?

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