Gulliver in Applyland

Abstract

Before “he married Mary Burton, second daughter … of a hosier in Newgate Street,” young Gulliver, according to Swift,¹ “learned navigation and other parts of mathematics useful to those who intend to travel.” Mathematics for its own sake began to interest Gulliver, a few years later, because of his adventures (not mentioned by Swift and only recently recorded in the Mathematical Gazette²) on an island that he called Land without One, Two, Three. Upon his return to England he began to study what then - in the early 1700’s - was the most advanced branch of mathematics - analysis: the theory of functions and fluents. On a later trip to the Land without One, Two, Three³, Gulliver discovered a neighbouring isle called Applyland - a name that had originated in the preoccupation of the insular arithmeticians with scientific applications.