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 gave as example of a pseudomath a certain James Smith who claimed persistently to have proved that is exactly . Of Smith, De Morgan wrote: "He is beyond a doubt the ablest head at unreasoning, and the greatest hand at writing it, of all who have tried in our day to attach their names to an error." The term pseudomath was adopted later by Tobias Dantzig. 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. The term pseudomathematics has been applied to attempts in mental and social sciences to quantify the effects of what is typically considered to be qualitative. 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. See also 0.999... often claimed to be distinct from 1 Indiana Pi Bill Eccentricity (behavior) Mathematical fallacy Pseudoscience References Further reading Underwood Dudley (1987), A Budget of Trisections, Springer Science+Business Media. . Revised and reissued in 1996 as The Trisectors, Mathematical Association of America. . Underwood Dudley (1997), Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought, Mathematical Association of America. . Clifford Pickover (1999), Strange Brains and Genius, Quill. . Pseudoscience Math Philosophy of mathematics