Implicature In Wonderland

---- By J. L. Speranza, F. R. S. (failed), &c.
---------- For the Grice Club

----- SOME RUNNING COMMENTS ON BAILEY'S piece at the NYT (thanks to L. J. Kramer for pointing my attention to this). In her op-piece, "Algebra in Wonderland" M. Bailey, of Oxford, writes:

Since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published [...] scholars have noted how its characters are based on real people [...] Dodgson most likely had real models for [all] the strange happenings in Wonderland; [His is] a mishmash of satire [on] a finely honed [affilato, affinato][mathematic] for describing the conceptual relations between things

But Dodgson, Bayley writes, would not have such "nonsense" as to what this 'new' mathematic was supposed to be doing --

Regarding the psych-analytic "WHO-ARE-YOU?" encounter Alice has with with the Caterpillar, Bailey is sure it's about the square root of a negative number. Bayley:

Alice’s exchange with the Caterpillar
parodies the first purely symbolic system
of algebra [...] by Augustus De Morgan

The Anglo-Indian, as I call him, who had published on the very Un-Greek notion of 'Arabic' algebra as meaning almost any nonsense you want: square root of negative numbers, and plus: proportion, rather than absolute length. Hence, Bailey surmises, Alice's change of formats, which the Caterpillar accepts provided they keep the proportion (or 'temper') correct.

Chapter 6, 'Pig and Pepper,' parodies[on the other hand]the Principle of Continuity a bizarre concept from projective geometry, and an important aspect of topology where one shape can bend and stretch into another and a circle is the same as an ellipse or a parabola

The Duchess’s baby, thus,

turns into a pig, witht the Cheshire Cat expressing, “I thought it would.”

Finally,

we should read tea-party as [t]-party,
with "t" being the mathematical symbol for Time

Cfr. Henninge, "if you knew Grice as much as I do" (Henninge, "A Grice-Brie Party", this blog). Bayle concludes her note:

Without math, “Alice” might have
been more like Dodgson’s later book,
“Sylvie and Bruno”

I still treasure a couple of things!

(a). A beautiful photo of yours truly as Mad-Hatter (the setting!) in one of my fancy-dress parties. I will try and scan it and share!

(b). The whole collection of Mischmasch, a series of circulars I edited with my cousin Peter Willemoes, where he made great fun of things. For one of those issues (the series of which I shared with the Lewis Carroll Society in Luton, Beds, via Anna-Maria Ghersi, a member and our our contact), we cared to translate (and I'll see if I can find it and paste):

(c). J. L. Borges's foreword to a local edition (tr. by E. Stilman, Buenos Aires: Corregidor) of "The Alice Books". It's a short piece but instilled with all the love he always had for the book and which he instilled on me. Borges starts by citing Dodgson's Symbolic Logic and the discussion of the empty-set: the set of impossible things. The Alice Books surely do not belong: they are pretty possible, if weird.

(d). I went as far as getting hold of Sutherland, Logic and Lewis Carroll (big thick book I got from Holland Janua Linguarum Series Major). Indeed, all of Bayley's references are there to be beholden: Mill in particular.

I am pleased that Bailey is at Oxford. Oxford just would not be the same (i.e. Oxford) without Carroll. He belonged to the best of the best. My by-far best mementos at Oxford were walking down Aldate's, pass the Alice Shop, towards the Christ Church Meadows. Plus Science Museum to see the embalmed Dodo, and those summer days rowing as far as wherever it was that the Reverend rowed with Duckworth. I treasure most of Dodgson's oeuvre at my Swimming-Pool Library, and I'm pleased to have presented to the Lewis Carroll Society this piece on Humpty Dumpty which got published in Jabberwocky and which I again am planning to scan and share with the Club. Cheers!

PS. Yes: I realise "Implicature in Wonderland" is clumsier than (the non-clumsy) "Algebra in Wonderland" but -- hey. I should add "Aspects of Alice" and the work of Peter Alexander, and P. N. Heath, which also, via Gardner, have explicated some of the sous-entendus (to use Mill's phrase) of Carrolliana for us! -- and posterity. Etc.