A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I — Story, Setting & Ideas

Editorial Interventions and Authorial Intent

The preface by David Eugene Smith reveals the delicate balance between preserving De Morgan's voice and preparing an unfinished manuscript for publication. Smith describes the work as left "avowedly imperfect" and explains that he made only slight alterations—mostly verbal or transpositions of sentences—to secure coherence. One notable omission is an account of the quarrel between Sir James South and Mr. Troughton over the equatorial telescope, which Smith judged too recent for inclusion. This editorial choice highlights the tension between contemporary relevance and historical distance. Smith also removed brackets that De Morgan had used to distinguish supplementary paragraphs, except where needed to indicate subsequent writing. The result is a text that aims to be faithful to De Morgan's intentions while acknowledging the limitations of posthumous editing.

Paradox as a Lens on Scientific Culture

De Morgan's definition of paradox—"thing counter to general opinion or practice"—is illustrated through examples that reveal the social dynamics of scientific debate. In one passage, he recounts how a binder mistakenly attributed the anonymous Discourse on Probability to him, leading to persistent misattribution despite repeated denials. This anecdote underscores how authorship and reputation can become entangled with the content of ideas. Another example involves Sir John Lubbock's aversion to slang: Lubbock replaced "head and tail" with "obverse and reverse" in a work on games of chance, but was forced to use the colloquial name "Bessy Bedlam" for a racehorse. De Morgan delights in this small victory of circumstance over pedantry, showing how even the most rigorous minds are subject to the pressures of everyday language.

The Gambler's Fallacy and Mathematical Misconception

De Morgan dissects the reasoning behind gambling strategies, particularly the belief that a long run of one outcome makes the opposite more likely. He cites an Almanach Romain sur la Loterie Royale de France that provides sympathetic numbers based on the principle that "anything which has not happened for a long time must be soon to come." De Morgan counters with a statistical observation: if a run of five reds at rouge et noir is registered, the next game is just as likely to extend the run as to turn black. He wryly suggests that if gamblers would take up squaring the circle, "what a load of misery would be saved." This remark ties the fallacy to the broader theme of paradox, where flawed reasoning persists despite evidence. The passage exemplifies De Morgan's method of using concrete, everyday examples to expose logical errors.

Readers approaching A Budget of Paradoxes should expect a meandering, opinionated work that rewards patience. De Morgan's voice is central: he is by turns amused, exasperated, and instructive. The book is best read not as a unified argument but as a series of encounters with intellectual curiosities. Pay attention to the footnotes and asides, where De Morgan often reveals his sharpest observations. The editor's preface provides essential context for understanding the text's composition and the choices made in preparing it for publication.

I remember my grandfather’s fascination with men who squared circles—earnest, wrong, certain. Reading De Morgan’s patient wit felt like watching him shake his head fondly. That same ache of earnest misdirection surfaced years later in Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 1. The Emigrant Literature — Context and Discussion, where whole movements, not just individuals, chart their own beautiful, impossible courses toward an imagined shore.