The term
pseudomath was coined by the logician
Augustus De Morgan, discoverer of
De Morgan's laws, in his
A Budget of Paradoxes (1872). De Morgan wrote: The pseudomath is a person who handles mathematics as the monkey handled the razor. The creature tried to shave himself as he had seen his master do; but, not having any notion of the angle at which the razor was to be held, he cut his own throat. He never tried a second time, poor animal! but the pseudomath keeps on at his work, proclaims himself clean-shaved, and all the rest of the world hairy. De Morgan named James Smith as an example of a pseudomath who claimed to have proved that Pi| is exactly . Dantzig observed: With the advent of modern times, there was an unprecedented increase in pseudomathematical activity. During the 18th century, all scientific academies of Europe saw themselves besieged by circle-squarers, trisectors, duplicators, and
perpetuum mobile designers, loudly clamoring for recognition of their epoch-making achievements. In the second half of that century, the nuisance had become so unbearable that, one by one, the academies were forced to discontinue the examination of the proposed solutions. More recently, the same term has been applied to
creationist attempts to refute the
theory of evolution, by way of spurious arguments purportedly based in
probability or
complexity theory, such as
intelligent design proponent
William Dembski's concept of
specified complexity. ==See also==