Often in the discussion and exploration of the history of science, scholars find themselves engaged to some degree in the history and application of mathematics as well. This understanding of mathematical applications and their communication in history often allows historians to better recognize exchanges and production of information necessary in the development of the Scientific Revolution as a concept. Benjamin Wardhaugh attempts just that in his work, Poor Robin’s Prophecies. Wardhaugh is a historian of mathematics with interests in history, science, math, and music who earned his PhD at Hertford College, Oxford. He is currently the Quondam Fellow at the All Souls College at Oxford University.
Poor Robin’s Prophecies tracks the history of mathematics, specifically the transmission and use of mathematical information as it concerned the average, less educated person living in England in the eighteenth century. Using mathematics with a focus on the ordinary English people, Wardhaugh hopes to elucidate the aspects of life surrounding this information, such as application of the information, how calculations could go wrong and what effect that had on people, how everyday people learned and understood math, and how math could be used for entertainment. Through these questions and lenses, Wardhaugh endeavors to show the many ways math was used and understood by those who fell below the class and academic strata of royalty, gentry, and academics like Isaac Newton. The book is organized into eight chapters, each covering some aspect of popular mathematical application in the eighteenth century.
The first chapter introduced the argument and angle of the book through an explanation of the background of almanacs, most especially a popular humor almanac, Poor Robin’s Almanac. Almanacs were often used by people to understand some aspect of life, usually involving weather, seasons, farming, calendars, and astrology which would affect the everyday lives of ordinary people frequently. These almanacs became so widely understood and used by the end of the seventeenth century that some began publishing almanac parodies for humor and entertainment, often emulating the formulaic prescriptions and advice of traditional almanacs to become more politically and socially savvy as a means of entertaining readers and irking some in positions of power. The topics covered often revolved around themes that utilized some form of mathematics, like astrology, “so if we wish to know about popular mathematics in this period, it’s astrology we must look at” (7). Astrology provided a way to create jokes that people could only understand with basic knowledge of mathematics, more often how complicated it was and how often mathematicians would get things wrong thus demonizing complicated calculations for predicting in general. The second chapter continued the focus on mathematical mistakes and subsequent distrust and ridicule at the everyday level with a look at predictions and prescriptions of math in events such as a solar eclipse in 1699 and the South Sea Bubble financial crisis. These events were written about and discussed in not only almanacs, but also newspapers, pamphlets, and textbooks which utilized math in order to explain to readers their importance and impact. These disastrous events in particular damaged the reputation of math and its practitioners for decades in England among the general populace.
The third chapter outlined examples of formal instruction of math from the view of two children as well as those who wrote instructional material for use in teaching. These particular children learned arithmetic from Spitalfields Mathematical Society in workbooks filled with notations and work by the children and their instructors. While these workbooks provide a different view into the world of math at this time, the practical application of it, discussed in chapter four, further expanded motivation behind learning through potential use, even in spite of earlier mentioned skepticism. The first and most obvious example of everyday use of math was in personal accounting, such as was kept in the family of Margaret Frank for several generations, a not unusual phenomenon which showed the access of basic mathematical understandings by women. Accounting also extended beyond one home to provide a profession which allowed someone to use math to keep records of transactions for individuals, families, and businesses. Another example of common use given was surveying which utilized specialized tools and math in order to measure and plot land. Thus, as professions like these became more common in the early eighteenth century, almanacs began to engage with practical math once more, “inserting into their publications mathematical information intended to be of practical use” (113).
Chapters five and six focused more on the beauty and reason of math and its ability to precisely explain and quantify nature. In print culture of the eighteenth century, math could be used to explain reason instructionally, but also creatively such as in stories, but also in puzzles which entertained and engaged a wider variety of people beyond gentry and professionals. Social organizations, like the Gentleman’s Society of Spalding, were also created and united in knowledge-sharing practices, often based in mathematical pursuits and related disciplines. These knowledge-based organizations promoted the flow of ideas in an age of “Newtonianism” where mathematical understanding was applied to the natural world as a means of explaining order. Math, therefore, became as much a philosophy as a discipline. In chapter seven, the philosophy of math became the basis of debate beyond social circles to those of larger application, including navigation and military endeavors in order to gain some form of advantage. However, Wardhaugh argued in the first chapter, the fun of math was the topic of chapter eight. Thus, math’s popularity was to blame for ideas of statistical fun in the case of the state lottery or logic puzzles found in publications. In all such cases and examples throughout the book, Wardhagh contended, math provides a unique lens into the lives and society of those in eighteenth century England which held a complicated relationship with the discipline that faced ridicule and respect and was applied in both reason and jest.
Poor Robin’s Almanac is an odd book with a unique subject. Wardhaugh appears to have written a book both focused on and distracted by some combination of math and publication in eighteenth century England. The work is clearly presented as a work of popular writing seeming to emulate the almanacs it intermittently discusses throughout in order to present a fairly rudimentary topic of modes of knowledge sharing especially as it related to math. However, Wardhaugh presents his argument without any formal introduction or conclusion and with a somewhat incoherent flow of information. Most alarmingly though is the lack of any substantial sourcing; the book contains less than six pages of notes for the eight chapters and those notes included are haphazardly and informally written for each chapter which, as the author notes, is not even “an exhaustive list of sources used or consulted” (238). While there is much to criticize, the topic itself is an interesting one, but one that should be more thoroughly and explicitly researched and written more formally to provide a sound and clearly verified basis of information.
