Item 58 - Letter from John Moore Heath

3 pp

JMH's [Trinity College, Assistant Tutor] criticism of WW's work [possibly his Mechanical Euclid, 1837]: 'Your manner of treating of geometry I think admirable, but your self-evident mechanics stagger me as yet I confess'. JMH thinks that it would help WW's argument if he showed that by purely he did not mean syllogistically only: 'We rest upon the idea of space for many new necessary conclusions long after we have settled the axioms'. He cannot admit the equation of a lever as axiomatic. Similarly, 'everybody knows practically that all bodies have a centre of gravity; but not axiomatically'.