According to Swade (2000), “The nineteenth century was not only an age of reason. It was also an age of quantification in which science and engineering set about reducing the world to number” (p. 12). It was thus a time when persons with high-functioning autism could come to the fore, and one such person was the English mathematician Charles Babbage.
Babbage spent most of his life trying to build calculating machines: first a “difference engine” and then a more ambitious “analytical engine.” Astonishingly, the designs for the analytical engine “embody in their mechanical and logical detail just about every major principle of the modern digital computer” (Swade, 2000, p. 94). He is routinely referred to as the father, grandfather, forefather, great ancestor, or progenitor of the modern computer. He probably had autistic features but not the full syndrome of autism (i.e., PDDNOS; pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified).
Life History
Charles Babbage was born in Teignmouth, Devon, in 1792. He was an autodidactic mathematical prodigy — a precociously accomplished mathematician — when he entered Cambridge at the age of 18. There, “disaffected, independent-minded and even rebellious, he pursued a programme of study of his own which favored the works of French mathematicians. Babbage was a radical: He admired Napoleonic France” (Swade, 2000, p. 18). Many geniuses have been autodidacts.
Babbage described his father as “stern, inflexible and reserved, perfectly just ... never generous ... uncultivated except perhaps by an acquaintance with English literature and history,” and said that he had no friend and was tyrannical (Swade, 2000, p. 22). Of note is the fact that the father suffered from extreme temper tantrums.
Babbage wrote first-class mathematical papers and clearly had an excellent mind. The Newtonian mind was an autistic mind. He wanted “the science of number (to) be mastered by mechanism. The ‘unerring certainty’ of mechanism would eliminate the risk of human error to which numerical calculation was so frustratingly prone” (Swade, 2000, p. 1). Infallible machines would compensate for the frailties of the human mind and extend its powers. No wonder persons with autism were attracted to this notion.
Babbage’s attitude toward God was like that of many much later scientists. He was expelled from Cambridge because he proposed a thesis to prove that God was material. This thesis might have shown naivety and a lack of empathy; putting it forward certainly showed a complete disregard for the religious atmosphere of the university. It was self-destructive.
In 1821 Babbage was “happily married and enjoying the life of a gentleman philosopher in Regency London” (Swade, 2000, p. 25). Clearly this is not typically autistic. Only four of his eight children lived, and his wife died in 1827.
He became obsessed with developing a “calculating engine,” about which he was very secretive. According to Swade (2000), he was “a fierce defender of moral probity” (p. 31).
Work
Babbage “was the great pioneer of computing and was equally famous on two counts — for inventing computers and for failing to build them” (Swade, 2000, p. 5). Babbage’s engine stimulated the debate about the relationship between the mind and the physical mechanism of the brain. The notion that the machine was in some sense “thinking” was not lost on Babbage or his contemporaries. Harry Wilmore Buxton (1988), a younger contemporary of Babbage and his posthumous biographer, noted that Babbage had substituted brass and iron for the pulp and fiber of a brain, and had taught wheelwork to think, or at least to do the office of thought.
Babbage advocated for decimal currency, speculated about linking London and Liverpool by speaking-tubes, and foresaw the exhaustion of coal reserves and the role of tidal power as a source of energy. He kept scribbling books — something like Ludwig Wittgenstein’s and the mathematician Paul Erdés’s notebooks — that ran to between 6,000 and 7,000 sheets.
With monumental effort, he developed a new engine called the analytical engine, which could be programmed by the use of punch cards. According to Swade (2000), the conception and design of the analytical engine ranks as one of the most startling intellectual achievements of the nineteenth century.
In a way this machine describes autistic thinking — the mind of the person with autism is a kind of analytical engine mind. Babbage possibly did not have autism, but he was trying to develop an autistic thinking machine — which really is what a computer is and why persons with autism are so fascinated by computers. Nevertheless, the anthropomorphization of the computer mechanism as an autistic mind is problematical, given the subtlety and irreducibility of every human mind — autistic and nonautistic alike.
Later Ada Augusta Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of the poet Byron, took an interest in Babbage’s work. Lovelace herself might have had hyperkinetic syndrome; she certainly was quite narcissistic and regarded herself as a genius, which she was not. Nevertheless, she brought Babbage’s analytical engine to the public attention.
Social Behavior
Babbage was “stubborn, determined, and convinced of the justice of [his] own position” (Swade, 2000, p. 61). He was a very sensitive personality. He married quickly without his father’s approval and wrote to his friend John Herschel about the marriage without mentioning his wife’s name. Herschel was shocked by the letter and said to him, “I am married and quarreled with my father — good God Babbage — how is it possible for a man to calmly sit down and pen those two sentences — add a few more which look like self-justification — and pass off to functional equations” (Swade, 2000, p. 21). This is a very autistic behavior.
Babbage was hypersensitive. George Airy, Astronomer Royal, stated that in relation to the calculating machine, “Mr. Babbage made the approval of the machine a personal question. In consequence of this, I, and I believe other persons, have carefully abstained for several years from alluding to it in his presence. I think it is likely that he lives in a sort of dream as to its utility” (Swade, 2000, p. 23).
“Babbage behaved as though being right entitled him to be rude, and the strength of his conviction tended to make him insensitive to the effect of his actions on others. These caustic public attacks were a shocking breach of the conventions of the day” (Swade, 2000, p. 63). He was called the “irascible genius” (see Note 8), was dominating and controlling, and had an “immoderate rage.” His book “alienated the self-same people whose support he needed, and at the same time soured his relationship with the pre-eminent scientific body whose committees had three times recommended government support for his engine” (Swade, 2000, p. 64). He also had major arguments with his engine maker, Joseph Clement, which ended in total breakdown of the relationship, casting him in the role of enfant terrible.
Babbage worked in almost complete isolation. Maurice Wilkes, who studied his unpublished works, concluded, “Ever since going through Babbage’s notebooks, I have been haunted by the thought of the loneliness of his intellectual life during the period when, as he later tells us, he was working 10 or 11 days on the Analytical Engine” (Swade, 2000, p. 226).
There was little doubt that Babbage had serious social relationship difficulties. When his 17-year-old son left for India, Babbage “took his farewell in the library, not troubling to see his son to the waiting cab. His indifference was not lost” on his son (Swade, 2000, p. 172). In some respects he had a fairly similar social life to that of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (Fitzgerald, 2005).
Nevertheless, Babbage became “a sought-after dinner guest. He was a celebrity, an engaging raconteur, full of wit and exuberant invention. To be able to say ‘Mr. Babbage is coming to dinner’ was the pleasure and delight of any hostess” (Swade, 2000, p. 73). Babbage was seen as a bon vivant with a love of dining out and socializing, and a good host and raconteur. With his brightly colored waistcoats, he was also something of a dandy. This is not typically autistic.
According to Swade (2000), Babbage at the age of 60 was “completely left out. Not just ignored, but actively excluded. His reputation for confrontation and protest as well as his earlier radicalism made him ‘unclubbable” ” (p. 185). This is quite autistic. Babbage tended to make himself an object of ridicule. In later life he “wrote pitifully of solitude and loneliness, and revealed the despair to which his efforts, personal sacrifices and lack of recognition had at times reduced him” (Swade, 2000, p. 190).
At his funeral there was only one carriage — that of the Duchess of Somerset — and few mourners. It would appear that both Babbage’s genius and his failure might have been due to his high-functioning autism (if indeed he had this condition — the evidence is inconclusive). He failed in most professional relationships.
Narrow Interests/Obsessiveness
Swade (2000) noted, “The scope of his work was broad even by the generous standards of Victorian polymathy — mathematics, chess, lockpicking, taxation, life assurance, geology, politics, philosophy, electricity and magnetism” (p. 215). This is not typically autistic (although Thomas Jefferson also showed a wide range of interests and was almost certainly autistic). Nonetheless, Babbage became totally absorbed with his computing project by 1826, writing, “I did not pledge myself to devote my whole time exclusively to this project, yet I feel that the liberal and very handsome manner in which I was received at the Treasury would be but ill returned if 1 were to allow any other agreements to impede its progress. I have hitherto given up everything up for this object, situations far more lucrative ... have been sacrificed, and I should not wish to change these sentiments now that it is approaching, I hope, to a successful termination” (Swade, 2000, p. 47). The machine was clearly an obsession for him.
According to Swade (2000), Babbage was “entirely seduced by the intellectual quest and propelled by an unremitting fascination with its mechanical realization” (p. 114). He “was driven by the exploration of the possible. He had glimpsed some profound vision, and he beckons to us over the heads of his contemporaries” (Swade, 2000, p. 117). He felt enormous satisfaction from the process of invention, which kept him so narrowly focused, stating, “I have given up all other pursuits for the sake of this” (Swade, 2000, p. 118). Swade also pointed out, “His pursuit of practical detail came not from any clear ambition to build the machine, but rather from his drive for the mastery of technique and the relish of the intellectual exploration of an extraordinary new world in which he was the first inhabitant” (p. 122).
According to Swade (2000), “Babbage was an inveterate inventor, and delighted in instruments, contrivances and mechanical novelties of all kinds” (p. 177). He was also interested in breaking ciphers and did succeed in breaking one. He had a great capacity to focus and to work — so great that, like Ludwig Wittgenstein and Isaac Newton, people worried about his sanity.
Routines/Control
Babbage was “a stickler for propriety and a fierce defender of moral probity”; he was always expressing “righteous indignation about issues that offended his sense of fairness” (Swade, 2000, p. 31).
Language/Humor
Babbage was a great storyteller, like Hans Christian Andersen and Arthur Conan Doyle (both of whom may have been autistic — see Fitzgerald, 2005). The geologist Charles Lyell stated in 1832, “We have had great fun in laughing at Babbage, who unconsciously jokes and reasons in high mathematics, talks of ‘algebraic equatior’ of such a one’s character in regard to the truth of his stories ... I remarked that the paint on Fitton’s house would not stand, on which Babbage said ‘no, painting a house outside is calculating by the index of minus one,’ or some such phrase, which made us stare; so that he said gravely by way of explanation, “That is to say, | am assuming revenue to be a function.’ All this without pedantry ...” (Swade, 2000, p. 77). This type of thinking would typically reflect high-functioning autism.
Naivety/Childishness
Babbage set himself up as the “self-elected defender of the unwary by exposing scam, craft or infelicitous misrepresentation” (Swade, 2000, p. 50). When government funds ran out, he invested his own money in the project, which was naive.
He wrote a very naive book violently attacking the Royal Society, the premier scientific society of the day in England. He named people and made many accusations against them. This act seems hyperkinetic and impulsive.
He also mishandled his intervention with the Duke of Wellington, then foreign secretary. He was an extraordinarily poor communicator with politicians and frequently made major enemies. The fact that he talked to so few people about his engine probably interfered with its progress. The only place he presented it with great detail was at a meeting he held in Italy. He lacked diplomatic skills.
Anxiety/Depression
Babbage suffered from considerable depression at times, and tried to allay it with work. For example, he wrote Passages from the Life of a Philosopher while in a most distressed state. It reveals “practically nothing of his emotions or of the state of mind he was in when he set off from England” on a continental tour (Swade, 2000, p. 54). This is a kind of autistic style of autobiography. He was quite depressed in 1829, and wrote that he had suffered so severely in health that all his friends, especially the medical ones, were urging him to put his work to one side (Swade, 2000).
Mode of Thought
A scientist and administrator, Lyon Playfair stated, “Babbage was full of information” (Swade, 2000, p. 81). Swade pointed out that it was perhaps no accident that “Pascal and Leibniz in the seventeenth century, Babbage and George Boole in the nineteenth, and Alan Turing and John von Neumann in the twentieth — seminal figures in the history of computing — were all, among their other accomplishments, mathematicians, possessing a natural affinity for symbol, representation, abstraction and logic” (2000, p. 84). The relationship between the rules of logic and “laws of thought” tantalized the thinkers of Babbage’s generation.
Idiosyncrasies
Eccentricity/esotericism. He was very sensitive to noise and organ grinders. He was an eccentric and comic figure. At the end of his life he “spoke as if he hated mankind in general, Englishmen in particular, and the English Government most of all” (Swade, 2000, p. 216).
Lack of common sense. Babbage had a great capacity for self-destruction and was headstrong. His lack of empathy and common sense was shown by the thesis he attempted to defend in the university (i.e., that God was a material agent). It was hardly surprising that he failed in this thesis, which was seen as blasphemous. This rebelliousness and lack of savoir-faire were to seriously impair his career.
Narcissism. Babbage was quite narcissistic and, according to Swade, “ached for recognition, titles and civil honors and growled at their lack.” He was hardly likely to get these with the way that he criticized people (2000, p. 138).
Conclusion
It is possible that in Babbage we have a mathematician of genius who was not autistic, as there are signs both for and against. Against the notion of Asperger Syndrome was the fact that “at Cambridge he enjoyed student life to the full. He formed an enduring friendship with John Herschel ... He played chess, took part in all-night sixpenny whist sessions, and bunked lectures and chapel to go sailing on the river with his chums” (Swade, 2000, p. 18). This does not sound like Asperger Syndrome. Some of Babbage’s characteristics, such as his dandyism and love of socializing, would be more suggestive of hyperkinetic syndrome.
- Michael Fitzgerald, Former Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
