Secrets, Symbols, and Systems: Parallels between Cryptanalysis and Algebra, 1580-1700 (Q4389750)

To fully grasp the topic of this article, one has to supplement its title by its closing paragraph: ``Since Leibniz's time the quest to decipher the secrets of nature has increasingly relied on the power of symbolic mathematics, as has the practice of cryptanalysis. Whether ciphers are set by human guile or divine craft, the heroic struggle to solve them rests on the innovations of Viète. Realization of the power of symbols and systems was a crucial step in the development of modern scientific thought.'' The disclosure of the secrets of nature was a common theme since the Renaissance. Some, like Giambattista delle Porta, author of \textit{Magia naturalis} (1558), searched for arcane methods, others set their hope on alchemical or cabbalistic approaches. Galileo, however, propagated that the book of nature is written in mathematical language. But unlike Viète's mathematics, Galileo's was still modeled on ancient geometry: triangles, circles, and other figures. Viète, on the other hand (whose mathematical investigations were connected with cosmological and astronomical work), introduced the mathematics of species, or specious arithmetic: symbolic notation by letters for unknowns as well as for coefficients of an equation. Just as he searched for general methods for the solution of such algebraic equations, as an experienced cryptologist Viète insisted on methodical solution of encoded text. This he did in contrast to Blaise de Vigenère, a French diplomat and cryptologist, who in his \textit{Traicté des chiffres} (1586) denied the possibility of rules for deciphering cryptic messages. In fact, Viète claimed to have an ``infallible rule'' for solving ciphers. It was based, among other observations, on systematic examination of the relative frequency of triads of ciphered symbols. (Throughout, the author makes the silent presupposition that the texts are encoded by numbers or letters, although there is one illustration showing an encryption in the form of the position of stars in a cloudy sky.) The article also includes a brief discussion of retrospective testimony of John Wallis and G. W. Leibniz. Induced by an anonymous review of Wallis's \textit{Treatise of Algebra} (1685) in the \textit{Acta eruditorum} of 1686, they exchanged their views by correspondence. Wallis, like Viète an eminent mathematician and cryptologist, denied -- perhaps for political reasons -- the existence of general rules for deciphering. For Leibniz, cryptology was a kind of calculus and a crucial model for his `mathesis universalis'; cryptanalysis, he believed, would show the way toward a new art of making hypotheses, toward a science of hermeneutics.