Robert Recorde: The Life and Times of a Tudor Mathematician

Robert Recorde

Title page of The Castle of Knowledge

Robert Recorde

The Life and Times of a Tudor Mathematician

EDITED BY

GARETH ROBERTS AND FENNY SMITH

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS

CARDIFF

2012

© The Contributors, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library CIP Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-7083-2682-4

e-ISBN 978-1-78316-108-9

The rights of the Contributors to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Contents

List of illustrations

Notes on contributors

Acknowledgements

Preface

Editorial conventions

Introduction

1   The lives and works of Robert Recorde

Jack Williams

2   Robert Recorde and his remarkable Arithmetic

John Denniss and Fenny Smith

3   Recorde and The Vrinal of Physick: context, uroscopy and the practice of medicine

Margaret Pelling

4   The Pathway to Knowledg and the English Euclidean tradition

Jacqueline Stedall

5   The Castle of Knowledge: astronomy and the sphere

Stephen Johnston

6   The Whetstone of Witte: content and sources

Ulrich Reich

7   The Welsh context of Robert Recorde

Nia M. W. Powell

8   Commonwealth and Empire: Robert Recorde in Tudor England

Howell A. Lloyd

9   Data, computation and the Tudor knowledge economy

John V. Tucker

Appendix

From Recorde to relativity: a speculation

Gareth Wyn Evans

Bibliography

List of illustrations

F

RONTISPIECE

: title page of The Castle of Knowledge

C

HAPTER

2

1.   Recorde’s table of basic multiplication facts

2.   The first stage in a calculation on a counting board

3.   Finger notation

C

HAPTER

3

1.   Title page of The Vrinal of Physick

2.   Graduated urine flask

C

HAPTER

5

1.   An armillary sphere

2.   Title page of a copy of The Castle of Knowledge owned by William Cecil

3.   Plasterwork renderings of Destiny and Fortune at Little Moreton Hall, Cheshire

4.   Woodcut of the letter T from The Castle of Knowledge

5.   Annotations by William Cecil in his copy of The Castle of Knowledge

C

HAPTER

6

1.   Title page of Cardano’s Practica arithmetice, & mensurandi singularis

2.   Title page of Stifel’s Arithmetica integra

3.   Title page of Scheubel’s De numeris et diversis rationibus

4.   Title page of Scheubel’s Algebrae compendiosa facilisque descriptio

5.   Recorde’s list of the first eighty-one cossic numbers

6.   Scheubel’s system of cossic numbers

7.   Recorde’s method of adding algebraic expressions

8.   Recorde’s method of multiplying algebraic expressions

9.   The invention of the equals sign

10. The first equations to be printed using the equals sign

11. A marginal annotation in Scheubel’s Algebrae compendiosa facilisque descriptio

C

HAPTER

7

1. Woodcut from the title page of The Ground of Artes

2. A marginal illustration from a 1623 edition of The Ground of Artes

3. Gutun Owain’s use of Hindu−Arabic numerals in 1488/9

4. Sir John Prise’s list of numbers as set out in Yny Lhyvyr Hwnn (1546)

5. Use of valet to signify ‘equal to’ in tax documents

A

PPENDIX

1. The locus of a point on a wheel rolling around a larger fixed wheel

2. A more likely depiction of the locus of a point on the rolling wheel

3. To prove that the opposite angles of a parallelogram are equal

Unless noted otherwise, illustrations from Recorde’s books have been provided courtesy of TGR Renascent Books.

Notes on contributors

J

OHN

D

ENNISS

is an independent scholar with an extensive knowledge of early English arithmetic texts.

G

ARETH

W

YN

E

VANS

(1921–2005) was appointed lecturer in Applied Mathematics at University College Swansea in 1949. He taught at Swansea for thirty-five years, specializing in relativity, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. He had a strong interest in the history of the development of mathematics, particularly the concept of time.

S

TEPHEN

J

OHNSTON

is Assistant Keeper at the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford. He first met Robert Recorde in the 1980s, as a graduate student working on Elizabethan practical mathematics. His research and teaching still focus on topics in the histories of early modern science, technology and mathematics.

H

OWELL

A. L

LOYD

is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Hull. His research interests lie in a range of early modern British and European subject areas, and nowadays principally in the history of ideas.

M

ARGARET

P

ELLING

retired in 2009 as Reader in the Social History of Medicine in the History Faculty, University of Oxford. She is now based at the Wellcome Unit at Oxford as a Senior Research Associate. Her research on health, medicine and social conditions focuses primarily on the Tudor and early Stuart periods.

N

IA

M. W. P

OWELL

is a lecturer in the School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology at Bangor University where she specializes in social, economic and cultural aspects of early modern Wales.

U

LRICH

R

EICH

lectured at the University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe in Germany. His research interests in the history of mathematics include the work of Johann Scheubel (1494–1570) and his link with Recorde.

G

ARETH

R

OBERTS

is an Emeritus Professor of Education at Bangor University. He has particular interests in the acquisition of mathematical concepts within bilingual contexts.

F

ENNY

S

MITH

is an independent scholar with knowledge of ancient and medieval numerical notation and arithmetic techniques, and Italian Renaissance algebra.

J

ACQUELINE

S

TEDALL

is a Senior Research Fellow in History of Mathematics at The Queen’s College and the Mathematical Institute, Oxford, with a special interest in early modern English mathematics and the development of algebra.

J

OHN

V. T

UCKER

is Professor of Computer Science and Head of the School of Physical Sciences at Swansea University. His research uses algebra and logic to understand computing systems. He also has a particular interest in the history of computation, including its social, economic and cultural contexts.

J

ACK

W

ILLIAMS

is an independent scholar with interests in Robert Recorde’s biography, the metallurgy of coinage, mercantile arithmetic and unit fractions.

Acknowledgements

I

N BRINGING THIS PROJECT

to fruition, the editors have enjoyed the support and encouragement of many individuals and organisations. The work has taken its inspiration from the extensive groundwork completed by Jack Williams and his vision to ensure that Robert Recorde’s life and accomplishments are fully documented. We have also benefited from the ready advice and constant encouragement of Jacqueline Stedall, and Gordon and Elizabeth Roberts. Without the timely financial sponsorship provided by Bangor University, the British Society for the History of Mathematics, WALMATO and WJEC, the venture could not have been completed. We have also appreciated the support of staff at the Tenby Museum and Art Gallery, who have worked tirelessly to disseminate information about the most famous son of that delightful town. Particular thanks are due to the family of the late Gareth Wyn Evans for permission to reproduce his 1958 lecture as an appendix in this volume. We are also indebted to the individual authors, who have shown endless patience and endured gentle prodding by the editors with good grace. The constructive advice provided by an unnamed reader was greatly appreciated and we wish also to express our thanks for the assistance of the team at the University of Wales Press: Ennis Akpinar, Sarah Lewis, Siân Chapman, Dafydd Jones, Henry Maas and Catrin Harries.

Preface

R

OBERT

R

ECORDE

has had a ‘makeover’. It has been a long process and is still to mature fully as his importance to the development of mathematical thinking becomes ever clearer.

He is most popularly known as the Tudor mathematician who invented the equals sign, but other facets of Recorde’s life are also well documented. These include his extensive mathematical publications, his work as a physician, his often turbulent service to the Crown, and his keen Protestantism.¹

In Wales, the first public acknowledgement of his work took the form of a bust by Owen Thomas erected in 1910, the assumed 400th anniversary of his birth, in St Thomas’s Chapel within St Mary’s Parish Church in Tenby, Recorde’s birthplace. This image of Recorde is based on a portrait subsequently shown to be of someone quite different² and there are some inaccuracies in the accompanying stone memorial tablet. Nonetheless, the image and the biographical sketch together provided an iconic reference point and a challenge for further work.

One of the uncertainties yet to be fully resolved is the exact year of Recorde’s birth. The issue is teased out further in this volume by Jack Williams, who has undertaken exhaustive research to ‘set the Recorde straight’. Without his encyclopaedic knowledge, this book would not have been possible.³

The year of Recorde’s death is more certain and its 400th anniversary was commemorated in 1958 at a conference in Trinity College, Carmarthen. The event was organized by the Faculty of Education at Aberystwyth, and was supported by the south-west Wales branch of the Mathematical Association. A report on the conference appeared in the Mathematical Gazette.⁴ It is significant that the impetus for the conference arose from a faculty of education and that it was supported further by an organization concerned with the teaching and learning of mathematics.

By 1964 those within institutions of higher education in Wales involved with the teaching and learning of mathematics (mainly, but not exclusively, as part of teacher training) came together to form an organization still known by the somewhat curious acronym WALMATO.⁵ From the outset, WALMATO enjoyed the support of members of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate working in Wales and representatives of local education authorities across Wales. As well as providing a network for those involved in mathematics education, WALMATO’s main activity centres on an annual conference held at Gregynog, a University of Wales centre situated in mid-Wales. Robert Recorde rapidly became WALMATO’s unofficial honorary past-president, sometimes irreverently but affectionately referred to by its members as ‘Dai equals’!

At the celebration of its twenty-fifth birthday in 1989, the WALMATO conference included a paper by Alun O. Morris, professor of mathematics at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, on ‘Robert Recorde and notation in mathematics’. The paper was subsequently included in the proceedings of the conference, Mathematical Education in Wales: Twenty-five Years of WALMATO, an internal publication edited by Tom Brissenden and Glyn Johns, mathematics tutors in the Department of Education at the University College of Swansea and the University of Wales College Cardiff, respectively.

At the turn of the millennium, Robert Recorde was celebrated at the University of Wales Swansea when, in February 2000, its Department of Computer Science named a seminar and conference room the Robert Recorde Room. The Department, led by John V. Tucker (one of the contributors to this volume), subsequently commissioned a large slate plaque, the Robert Recorde Memorial, designed by the artist John Howes and carved by the calligrapher Ieuan Rees. This plaque, unveiled in 2001, adorns the entrance to the Robert Recorde Room. Recorde’s work and influence was now being recognized outside the confines of the disciplines of mathematics, education and Tudor history.

The 450th anniversary of Recorde’s death in 2008 provided the ideal opportunity for WALMATO to act as the initial catalyst to draw together these various strands in a conference devoted exclusively to Recorde’s life, his work and his continuing influence. Crucially, interest in the proposal was expressed by other mathematics organizations and, in particular, the British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) readily agreed to partner WALMATO in the conference planning.⁶ The conference also benefited from support generously provided by the Welsh Assembly Government and WJEC.

Publication of the conference proceedings had not been the original intention, but the success of the event and the enthusiasm engendered by the realization that a wealth of research was available, coupled with the cooperation of the University of Wales Press, led inexorably to the preparation of this book as an edited version of those proceedings.

The process was further assisted by Gordon and Elizabeth Roberts, who had attended the 2008 conference and had, ‘over coffee’, shown delegates their personal facsimile copies of Recorde’s books. Their subsequent decision, after some gentle cajoling, to make copies available on a commercial basis,⁷ has assisted the editors of this volume enormously and has also made copies of the originals readily accessible to interested readers. Gordon and Elizabeth have also augmented their publications with valuable additional information about Recorde and the background to each book.

Finally, during 2010 the town of Tenby celebrated the 500th anniversary of Recorde’s birth. The celebrations included a memorial service at St Mary’s Church, coinciding with the 800th anniversary of the church itself, and a memorial lecture at the town’s Museum and Art Gallery. The latter hosted a series of readings from Recorde’s books during the summer holiday period and also staged an exhibition, 2010−1510 = Robert Recorde, based on the response of over fifty artists to Recorde’s life and work.

Notes

1 See, for example, Stephen Johnston, ‘Recorde, Robert ( c .1512–1558)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), online edn accessed 21.11.09.

2 The portrait is now believed to be Flemish, dated 1631, and is housed at the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics of the University of Cambridge; see J. W. S. Cassels, ‘Is this a Recorde?’, Mathematical Gazette , 60/411 (March 1976), 59–61. See also chapter 3.

3 See the seminal work by Jack Williams, Robert Recorde: Tudor Polymath, Expositor and Practitioner of Computation (London, 2011).

4 W. S. Evans, ‘S.W. Wales Mathematical Association: report for the session 1957– 1958’, Mathematical Gazette , 43/343 (February 1959), i–ii.

5 Welsh Association of Lecturers in Mathematics in the Area Training Organization. Following the publication of the McNair Report in 1944, the School of Education of the University of Wales was designated by the Ministry of Education as a single Area Training Organization. See D. Gerwyn Lewis, The University and the Colleges of Education in Wales 1925–78 (Cardiff, 1980).

6 For a review of the conference, see Gordon Roberts, ‘Robert Recorde: his life and times’, BSHM Bulletin , 24/1 (2009), 40–2.

7 Facsimile copies of Recorde’s books are published by TGR Renascent Books. Details are available on the publisher’s website, www.renascentbooks.co.uk .

Editorial conventions

Q

UOTATIONS FROM

Recorde’s texts are reproduced using Recorde’s own spellings and punctuations, unless otherwise indicated. In particular, the title of each book corresponds to the spelling on the respective first editions as follows:

The Ground of Artes

The Vrinal of Physick

The Pathway to Knowledg

The Castle of Knowledge

The Whetstone of Witte

Reference to these books in the text or in footnotes is often shortened to Ground, Vrinal, Pathway, Castle and Whetstone respectively. Full details of Recorde’s books are provided in the bibliography at the end of the volume.

Recorde’s printers made extensive use of diacritical marks to indicate the omission of the consonant m or n. For example, the title of The Ground of Artes appears as The groūd of artes on the title page of the first edition. In general we have replaced such marks with the full spellings. Equally, contractions that appear in the original texts are written out in full so that, for example, ye and yt are reproduced as ‘the’ and ‘that’ respectively.

Quotations from Recorde’s books are generally referenced in-text. Unless indicated otherwise, such references are to the first editions. In most cases, individual pages are referenced using signature conventions such as in (Ground, sig. A.iiiv), where the superscript v indicates a left hand page. Square brackets are added to indicate that the signature mark, or part of it, has been omitted from the original, for example (Ground, sig. B[.i]). By contrast, page numbers are used to locate references in The Castle of Knowledge, in which the numbering is generally reliable, but a reference such as (Castle, p. 127 [129]) indicates that the quotation can be located on page 127 of The Castle of Knowledge, although the number on that page has been misprinted as 129.

The editors have been greatly assisted by the availability of facsimile copies of Recorde’s books published by TGR Renascent Books, Derby, and by advice liberally provided by the proprietors, Gordon and Elizabeth Roberts.

Introduction

GARETH ROBERTS AND FENNY SMITH

A

CRITICISM OFTEN LEVELLED

at Recorde was that he was not a first-rate mathematician and that his contribution to the development of mathematics was minimal. In 1920 Frank Morley dismissed his mathematical work as being ‘hardly memorable’¹ and shades of such criticism are not uncommon even today.

The flaw in such remarks is not that they are incorrect but that they completely miss the point. Recorde himself made no claim that he was pushing forward the frontiers of mathematics. He was, rather, a communicator of mathematical ideas who sought to explore ways in which to make mathematical knowledge and skills available to a wide population. Above all else, he was a mathematics educator, an insight first clearly underlined by Geoffrey Howson in his seminal work in 1982 on the history of mathematics education in England: ‘Not only did Recorde teach mathematics, but his writings show clearly – both implicitly and explicitly – that he had also given serious consideration to the problems of learning and teaching mathematics.’²

The theme of Recorde as a mathematics educator is common to a number of the contributions to this volume, particularly in relation to his publications on arithmetic (Ground), geometry (Pathway) and algebra (Whetstone). In his description of the essence of the ideal teaching process, Martin Trow could well have been summarizing Recorde’s methodology: ‘Teaching is not an action but a transaction; not an outcome but a process; not a performance, but an emotional and intellectual connection between teacher and learner.’³

This emotional and intellectual connection between teacher and learner is developed by Recorde through the adoption in three of his books of a dialogue style between Scholar and Master that enables him to explore ideas in a leisurely way, revisiting difficult points, introducing elements of wit and humour to enlighten the exposition and, ultimately, at the end of Whetstone, to signal his own demise.

The use of the vernacular throughout his books emphasizes the importance Recorde attached to being able to communicate with a wide audience, and his concern with points of vocabulary highlights his attempts, not always successful, to adapt the English language to enable it to express mathematical ideas with precision and clarity.

He emphasizes the need to provide motivation for new mathematical ideas in the learner’s mind, to aim for understanding (as opposed to learning by rote), to make wide use of examples to illustrate the application of new ideas, and the need to practise that which has been taught and learned (Ground, sig. Y.ii): ‘vndoubtedly it is practise and exercise that maketh men prompte and experte in euery kynde of knowlege.’

Howson’s analysis of the development of mathematical education in England coincided with the publication of the highly influential Cockcroft Report,⁴ the deliberations of a committee of inquiry into the teaching of mathematics in schools in England and Wales. In clear and succinct terms the report set out the principles that underpin good teaching. It is instructive that those principles, famously encapsulated in the report’s paragraph 243, closely reflect the very notions that implicitly informed Recorde’s own thinking.⁵

The contributors to the present volume explore aspects of Recorde as a son of Tenby, the content and impact of his publications, and the political and social contexts in which he both lived and worked. The stage is set by Jack Williams, who draws on his extensive research to map out Recorde’s biographical details, the nature of his work in the service of the Crown and his interests as an antiquary and linguist. The analysis also highlights Recorde’s lack of sufficient political guile to enable him to survive the intrigues of Tudor England, leading to his tragic imprisonment and death.

In the chronological order of their years of publication there follow chapters on each of Recorde’s five extant books. John Denniss and Fenny Smith begin by exploring Recorde’s The Ground of Artes (1543), the first home-grown Arithmetic in English, which establishes a pattern followed by arithmetic texts for almost the next 300 years.

Recorde’s only medical publication, The Vrinal of Physick (1547), is notable both for its choice of topic – the study of uroscopy – and the use of the vernacular. Margaret Pelling analyses why Recorde, while seeking to establish himself as a medical scholar, chose not to address his treatise in Latin to the select few but sought to reach a wider audience.

Recorde was the first to expound Euclid in English. In The Pathway to Knowledg (1551) he had to begin from the very beginning, first to explain what this strange subject of geometry was about and why anyone should trouble to study it, and then to teach its basic rules and constructions. Jacqueline Stedall argues that his work was a notable attempt to convey a significant part of classical learning in English, and was accomplished with considerable literary and poetic style.

The Castle of Knowledge (1556) sets out the elements of astronomy. The subject is portrayed by Recorde as both a humanistic and a practical endeavour, emending classical texts as well as providing instruction for the reader to make an armillary sphere. In addition to analysing Recorde’s writing, Stephen Johnston draws on contemporary annotations to consider the book’s audience and how they read the text.

In the year before he died, Recorde published his best-known work, The Whetstone of Witte (1557), presenting the fundamentals of algebra in English, in which he famously proposed the use of the modern equals sign. Ulrich Reich provides a step-by-step analysis of the way in which the book’s arguments are developed and of the sources, mainly by writers in Germany, that influenced its content. Modern readers may be challenged by some of the mathematical intricacies, but they will also gain a strong impression of Recorde’s attempts to simplify and to convey the essence of European mathematical thinking to a wider English-speaking audience.

There follow three chapters that explore the historical background and social context of Robert Recorde’s work. In the first of these chapters, Nia Powell sets his accomplishments within the background of his birthplace, Wales, and the influence of his upbringing in Tenby, a thriving port with international trading links. Howell Lloyd places Recorde’s work within the context of the maritime expansion upon which Tudor England was embarking, a process that led ultimately to the creation of an overseas ‘empire’ in the modern sense, and analyses both Recorde’s successes and failings in supporting this venture. Finally, John Tucker identifies the new role that mathematical ideas and methods were beginning to play in the society and economy of Europe, particularly in relation to the increasingly important role of data and computation, and explores Recorde’s engagement with these developments.

Recorde published two other mathematical books as part of his series of texts: The Gate of Knowledge and The Treasure of Knowledge. No copies of either of these books have survived and there remain only hints in Recorde’s extant works as to what they may have comprised.⁶ There are also indications that Recorde had further publications in the offing, but his ultimate downfall and early death cut short these ambitions.

We can but marvel at Recorde’s accomplishments, while also saddened by the political shortcomings that led to his end. This remarkable ‘son of Tenby’ bestrode the mathematical world during a tempestuous period in the House of Tudor and emerged, not unscathed, but having made significant contributions to the wide promotion of mathematical ideas, many of which retained their influence and still resonate to this day

At the end of the ‘Preface to the Reader’ in The Castle of Knowledge, in which Robert Recorde extols God’s virtues and kindnesses, he introduces a hymn of praise with these words: ‘In token therfore of thankfulnes, let vs singe an Hymne vn to that God, praisinge his name, and magnifiynge him foreuer and euer.’

At a special service in St Mary’s Parish Church, Tenby, on Sunday 6 June 2010, marking the 500th anniversary of Recorde’s birth, that hymn was sung to more modern words as originally transcribed by Adolf Prag (1906–2004), a teacher of mathematics and Librarian at Westminster School, one of the speakers at the 1958 conference in Carmarthen to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Robert Recorde’s death. On Sunday 20 July 1958, the delegates to that conference were transported in two buses to attend a ‘Religious Service of Commemoration’ at St Mary’s Church at which the hymn was sung.

The world is wrought right wondrously

Whose parts exceed man’s phantasies;

His maker yet most marvellously

Surmounteth more all men’s devise.

No eye has seen, no ear has heard

The least sparks of his majesty;

All thoughts of hearts are fully barred

To comprehend his deity.

Oh Lord, who may thy power know?

What mind can reach thee to behold?

In heaven above, in earth below

His presence is, for so he would.

His goodness great, so is his power,

His wisdom equal with them both;

No want of will, since every hour

His grace to show he is not loth.

Behold his power in the sky,

His wisdom eachwhere does appear;

His goodness does grace multiply

In heaven, on earth, both far and near.

Notes

1 Frank V. Morley, ‘Finis coronat opus’, Scientific Monthly , 10/3 (1920), 306–8.

2 Geoffrey Howson, A History of Mathematics Education in England (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 6–28.

3 Martin Trow, ‘The business of learning’, The Times Higher Education Supplement , 8 October 1993, p. 20.

4 Department of Education and Science, Mathematics Counts: Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Teaching of Mathematics in Schools under the Chairmanship of Dr W. H. Cockcroft (London, 1982).

5 Ibid., paragraph 243 states that ‘mathematics teaching at all levels should include opportunities for: exposition by the teacher; discussion between teacher and pupils and between pupils themselves; appropriate practical work; consolidation and practice of fundamental skills and routines; problem solving, including the application of mathematics to everyday situations; and, investigational work.’

6 See, in particular, the verses that appear in the Castle (sig. [a.viii]) setting out ‘an orderly trade of studye in the Authors woorkes, appertainyng to the mathematicalles’.

ONE

The lives and works of Robert Recorde

JACK WILLIAMS

1. Overview

¹

T

HE CONFERENCE

referred to in the Introduction marked the 450th anniversary of the death of Robert Recorde. It is therefore