The art of changes: Bell- ringing, anagrams, and the culture of combination in seventeenth- century England
<p>“Suppose we a number of things exposed, different from each other, as a, b, c, d, e, &c.;,” proposed the mathematician and cryptographer John Wallis in 1685. “The Question is; how many ways the order of these may be varied? As, for instance, how many changes may be Rung upon a certa...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Journal article |
| Published: |
Duke University Press
2018
|
| _version_ | 1797105322834264064 |
|---|---|
| author | Hunt, K |
| author_facet | Hunt, K |
| author_sort | Hunt, K |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | <p>“Suppose we a number of things exposed, different from each other, as a, b, c, d, e, &c.;,” proposed the mathematician and cryptographer John Wallis in 1685. “The Question is; how many ways the order of these may be varied? As, for instance, how many changes may be Rung upon a certain Number of Bells; or, how many ways (by way of Anagram) a certain Number of (different) Letters, may be differently ordered?” Wallis’s question, written in an appendix to his history of algebra, is an appeal to and reflection of the early modern culture of combination. His calculation determines the number of permutations: a subset of combination in which each unit must be present every time. By establishing the number of ways of ordering the units, Wallis describes the limits of the space within which variation can take place. The “Number of Alternations thus calculated,” he continued, “will proceed to a vast Multitude beyond what at first one would expect”: the space is large, but it is also knowable. The proposition that the world was made up of a fixed number of units, which could be recombined and reordered in a finite number of ways, provided the foundation and the structure for many manifestations of the medieval and early modern ars combinatoria, from alchemy to language planning, from the kabbalah and the ars magna of Ramon Llull to the development of a mathesis universalis. The calculation Wallis describes underpins these practices.</p> <br/> <p>This essay explores early modern permutational systems by examining Wallis’s calculation and the examples he uses to explain it: letters and bells. In the century before he was writing, both had been used in England to exemplify rigorous permutation: letters, in the craze for anagrams; bells, in the new and wildly popular practice of change- ringing. Neither was part of the mainstream of the republic of letters but despite, or maybe even because of, their intellectual triviality, both show the pervasiveness of the culture of combination over the course of the seventeenth century. Attend ing to the form of both highlights the strategies of meaning- making in these contemporary arts of variation.</p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T06:45:51Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:fad1eb36-e5c3-40ff-bed0-892106b35551 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T06:45:51Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Duke University Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:fad1eb36-e5c3-40ff-bed0-892106b355512022-03-27T13:09:09ZThe art of changes: Bell- ringing, anagrams, and the culture of combination in seventeenth- century EnglandJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:fad1eb36-e5c3-40ff-bed0-892106b35551Symplectic Elements at OxfordDuke University Press2018Hunt, K<p>“Suppose we a number of things exposed, different from each other, as a, b, c, d, e, &c.;,” proposed the mathematician and cryptographer John Wallis in 1685. “The Question is; how many ways the order of these may be varied? As, for instance, how many changes may be Rung upon a certain Number of Bells; or, how many ways (by way of Anagram) a certain Number of (different) Letters, may be differently ordered?” Wallis’s question, written in an appendix to his history of algebra, is an appeal to and reflection of the early modern culture of combination. His calculation determines the number of permutations: a subset of combination in which each unit must be present every time. By establishing the number of ways of ordering the units, Wallis describes the limits of the space within which variation can take place. The “Number of Alternations thus calculated,” he continued, “will proceed to a vast Multitude beyond what at first one would expect”: the space is large, but it is also knowable. The proposition that the world was made up of a fixed number of units, which could be recombined and reordered in a finite number of ways, provided the foundation and the structure for many manifestations of the medieval and early modern ars combinatoria, from alchemy to language planning, from the kabbalah and the ars magna of Ramon Llull to the development of a mathesis universalis. The calculation Wallis describes underpins these practices.</p> <br/> <p>This essay explores early modern permutational systems by examining Wallis’s calculation and the examples he uses to explain it: letters and bells. In the century before he was writing, both had been used in England to exemplify rigorous permutation: letters, in the craze for anagrams; bells, in the new and wildly popular practice of change- ringing. Neither was part of the mainstream of the republic of letters but despite, or maybe even because of, their intellectual triviality, both show the pervasiveness of the culture of combination over the course of the seventeenth century. Attend ing to the form of both highlights the strategies of meaning- making in these contemporary arts of variation.</p> |
| spellingShingle | Hunt, K The art of changes: Bell- ringing, anagrams, and the culture of combination in seventeenth- century England |
| title | The art of changes: Bell- ringing, anagrams, and the culture of combination in seventeenth- century England |
| title_full | The art of changes: Bell- ringing, anagrams, and the culture of combination in seventeenth- century England |
| title_fullStr | The art of changes: Bell- ringing, anagrams, and the culture of combination in seventeenth- century England |
| title_full_unstemmed | The art of changes: Bell- ringing, anagrams, and the culture of combination in seventeenth- century England |
| title_short | The art of changes: Bell- ringing, anagrams, and the culture of combination in seventeenth- century England |
| title_sort | art of changes bell ringing anagrams and the culture of combination in seventeenth century england |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT huntk theartofchangesbellringinganagramsandthecultureofcombinationinseventeenthcenturyengland AT huntk artofchangesbellringinganagramsandthecultureofcombinationinseventeenthcenturyengland |