If They Had Passed It . . . // 25

happened to be visiting the House when the Bill was debated, probably helped concentrate their minds.) They did not debate the validity of the mathematics; they decided that the matter was not suitable for legislation. So they postponed the bill . . . and as I write, 111 years later, it remains that way.

The mathematics involved was almost certainly the brain- child of Edwin J. Goodwin, a doctor who dabbled in mathe- matics. He lived in the village of Solitude in Posey County, Indiana, and at various times claimed to have trisected the angle and duplicated the cube ­ two other famous and equally impossible feats ­ as well as squaring the circle. At any rate, the legislature of Indiana did not consciously attempt to give p an incorrect value by law ­ although there is a persuasive argument that passing the Bill would have `enacted' Goodwin's approach, implying its accuracy in law, though perhaps not in mathe-

........................................... matics. It's a delicate legal point.

If They Had Passed It . . . If the Indiana State Legislature had passed Bill 246, and if the worst-case scenario had proved legally valid, namely that the value of p in law was different from its mathematical value, the consequences would have been distinctly interesting. Suppose that the legal value is p 6¼ p, but the legislation states that p ¼ p. Then

pÀp

¼ 1 mathematically

pÀp

but

pÀp

¼ 0 legally

pÀp

Since mathematical truths are legally valid, the law would then be maintaining that 1 ¼ 0. Therefore all murderers have a cast- iron defence: admit to one murder, then argue that legally it is zero murders. And that's not the last of it. Multiply by one

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