Counting from One to a Million: Whitman's Engagement with Large Numbers

Abstract

This minute that comes to me over past decillions,There is no better than it and now.-Whitman, Song of Myself, Section 221I do not think seventy years is time of a man or woman,Nor that seventy of years is time of a man or woman,Nor that years will ever stop existence of me, or any one else.-Whitman, Who Learns Lesson Complete (LG1881 305)There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is fate - genetic and neural fate - of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.-Oliver Sacks, My Own Life2One of many unique aspects of Whitman's poetry that would have unsettled nineteenth-century readers of Leaves of Grass is poetic presence of large numbers.3 Whitman expanded realm of poetic diction in many ways, of course, but one of most striking remains his absorption of terms for large numbers that long had been familiar in realm of mathematics4 and more recently had been utilized in a widening array of sciences, particularly astronomy. The names for large numbers, then, were in language but in early years of nineteenth century were still not commonly used; as 1840 Penny Cyclopaedia of Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge put it: the terms billion, trillion, &c., though defined by arithmetical writers, have never found their way into common use, want of such numbers having never been experienced.5 These large numbers had long been a theoretical tool in mathematics, but, with advances in astronomy and geology, and early glimmerings of atomic physics, vast numbers gradually entered into realm of actual. The explosion in perception of time and distance brought on by scientific advances necessitated thinking of earth's age and earth's place in cosmos in terms beyond familiar and comfortable numbers that had previously served most humans well for dealing with material world.As a former teacher of arithmetic himself, and as a journalist keenly interested in emerging genre of American schoolbooks, Whitman was well aware of how these large numbers had quickly become a staple of every child's education. The arithmetic book he recommended in 1846 for use in Brooklyn schools, James B. Thomson's Practical Arithmetic,6 provides students with a numeration table taking them up to quadrillions, and among student exercises is a directive to read large numbers (like 504069470300400) and to write out in figures numbers like One hundred and thirteen billions, six hundred and fifty thousand.7 And very first section (Numeration) of Benjamin Greenleaf's influential 1847 Introduction to National Arithmetic (Designed for Common Schools) requires students to memorize and write out numbers from units to thousands to millions to billions to trillions to quatrillions to quintillions to sextillions and on up to tridecillions. Student assignments included writing out in words names of numbers up to forty-five digits long.8Arguably, then, audience for Whitman's poetry was better attuned than twenty-first-century audiences to particular definitions of numerical terms that Whitman so frequently employed in his poetry, even if they would have been surprised to find such arithmetical diction in a poetic context. Not only did these giant numbers appear in arithmetic textbooks, they were also frequently tossed about in early debates over whether scientific discoveries about vastness of time and space made existence of God more or less likely. Baptist minister Eli Noyes, for example, in his 1853 Lectures on Truth of argues that the scientific man, who looks into intricacies of can only ultimately corroborate teachings of Bible, for the one who studies nature, becomes more devout. …