7. De Morgan’s A Budget of Paradoxes

De Morgan was a man of many eccentricities, and nowhere were these idiosyncrasies more evident than in A Budget of Paradoxes. This was a 500-page book, published one year after his death, in 1872, which still remains his most accessible and oft-quoted work. The Budget focuses on the published output of mathematical cranks, frauds and pseudoscientists, presenting a multitude of rogue scientific theories, including attempts to prove the earth is flat, to disprove the law of universal gravitation and, of course, to square the circle. All of these are beautifully sent up by De Morgan in his wonderfully satirical style, providing the perfect forum for his whimsical, humorous, but above all, entertaining style of writing. The fondness with which the book was regarded appears near universal: one reviewer described it as ‘by very far the most individual book of the age’, while another called it ‘absolutely unique’. But what exactly did A Budget of Paradoxes contain? What was so attractive to its readers? And what made it so unusual? To answer these questions, this chapter presents a survey of what has been described as ‘one of the most delicious bits of satire of the nineteenth century’.