Herman Melville and Joseph Henry at the Albany Academy; or, Melville’s Education in Mathematics and Science

Ahab's Arithmetic: The Mathematics of Moby-Dick

“…Extant letters from Henry describe his difficulties in finding a good textbook, and a petition to the Academy's board (Farmer, 2016) 'to add a more advanced textbook for the Department's "higher students" just months before Melville won his ciphering award'. He was unsatisfied with his ultimate choice -Daboll's Arithmetic -dismissing it as 'a book of examples' 'good for nothing else'.…”

“…Turpin's essay looks at instances of Melville's allusions to mathematics in the context of his (Melville's) interest in Platonic idealism. Meredith Farmer's excellent article on Melville's education (Farmer, 2016) sheds light on the unusual opportunities Melville had for learning science and mathematics; the essay convincingly refutes the prevailing view among his biographers that Melville 'had no more instruction in science' 'than the average boy of his times'. Mathematical references can be found in many, perhaps all, of Melville's novels.…”

“…There are many biographies, and numerous journal articlesindeed at least one dedicated journal, Leviathan, of Melville studies. Yet I have only been able to find two papers (Turpin, 2015;Farmer, 2016) among the hundreds written by Melville scholars that address this aspect of Melville's workneither of them explicitly focuses on the mathematics of Moby-Dick. Turpin's essay looks at instances of Melville's allusions to mathematics in the context of his (Melville's) interest in Platonic idealism.…”

“…Meredith Farmer writes (Farmer, 2016) that one of the goals of her essay is to 'be available as historical scaffolding for work on Melville's engagement with different branches of science, technology, engineering and mathematics'. It is my hope that the current article can form a small contribution to this work.…”