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Geometry (Greek ?e?µet??a; geo = earth, metria = measure) arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers.
Classic geometry was focused in compass and straightedge constructions.
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Geometry (Greek ?e?µet??a; geo = earth, metria = measure) arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers.
Classic geometry was focused in compass and straightedge constructions. As they are the composition of five elemental constructions over a set of elements, as an algebra over an axiomatic system, the barrier between algebra and geometry began to fade out.
In modern times, geometric concepts have been generalized to a high level of abstraction and complexity, and have been subjected to the methods of calculus and abstract algebra, so that many modern branches of the field are barely recognizable as the descendants of early geometry. (See areas of mathematics and algebraic geometry.)
Early geometry
The earliest recorded beginnings of geometry can be traced to cavemen, who discovered obtuse triangles in the ancient Indus Valley (see Harappan Mathematics), and ancient Babylonia (see Babylonian mathematics) from around 3000 BC. Early geometry was a collection of empirically discovered principles concerning lengths, angles, areas, and volumes, which were developed to meet some practical need in surveying, construction, astronomy, and various crafts. Among these were some surprisingly sophisticated principles, and a modern mathematician might be hard put to derive some of them without the use of calculus. For example, both the Egyptians and the Babylonians were aware of versions of the Pythagorean theorem about 1500 years before Pythagoras; the Egyptians had a correct formula for the volume of a frustum of a square pyramid; the Babylonians had a trigonometry table.
Egyptian geometry
The ancient Egyptians knew that they could approximate the area of a circle as follows:
Area of Circle ˜ [ (Diameter) x 8/9 ]2.
Problem 50 of the Ahmes papyrus uses these methods to calculate the area of a circle, according to a rule that the area is equal to the square of 8/9 of the circle's diameter. This assumes that p is 4×(8/9)² (or 3.160493...), with an error of slightly over 0.63 percent. This value was slightly less accurate than the calculations of the Babylonians (25/8 = 3.125, within 0.53 percent), but was not otherwise surpassed until Archimedes' approximation of 211875/67441 = 3.14163, which had an error of just over 1 in 10,000).
Interestingly, Ahmes knew of the modern 22/7 as an approximation for pi, and used it to split a hekat, hekat x 22/x x 7/22 = hekat; however, Ahmes continued to use the traditional 256/81 value for pi for computing his hekat volume found in a cylinder.
Problem 48 involved using a square with side 9 units. This square was cut into a 3x3 grid. The diagonal of the corner squares were used to make an irregular octagon with an area of 63 units. This gave a second value for p of 3.111...
The two problems together indicate a range of values for Pi between 3.11 and 3.16.
Problem 14 in the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus gives the only ancient example finding the volume of a frustum of a pyramid, describing the correct formula:
Babylonian geometry
The Babylonians may have known the general rules for measuring areas and volumes. They measured the circumference of a circle as three times the diameter and the area as one-twelfth the square of the circumference, which would be correct if p is estimated as 3. The volume of a cylinder was taken as the product of the base and the height, however, the volume of the frustum of a cone or a square pyramid was incorrectly taken as the product of the height and half the sum of the bases. The Pythagorean theorem was also known to the Babylonians. Also, there was a recent discovery in which a tablet used p as 3 and 1/8. The Babylonians are also known for the Babylonian mile, which was a measure of distance equal to about seven miles today. This measurement for distances eventually was converted to a time-mile used for measuring the travel of the Sun, therefore, representing time.
Indian geometry
Harappan period
The earliest evidence of the use of mathematics in South Asia is in the artifacts of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), also called the Harappan civilization, during the 3rd millenium BCE. The people of the IVC manufactured bricks whose dimensions were in the proportion 4:2:1, considered favorable for the stability of a brick structure. They used a standardized system of weights based on the ratios: 1/20, 1/10, 1/5, 1/2, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500, with the unit weight equaling approximately 28 grams.They mass produced weights in regular geometrical shapes, which included hexahedron, cone and cylinder, thereby demonstrating knowledge of basic geometry.
Vedic period
The Vedas, composed during the Vedic period (late 2nd to early 1st millenia BCE), mostly contain mentions of numbers related to ritual, including powers of 10. Mesopotamian influence is possible in the form of the sexagesimal system.
The Satapatha Brahmana (9th century BCE) contains rules for ritual geometric constructions that are similar to the Sulba Sutras.
The Sulba Sutras (literally, "Aphorisms of the Chords" in Vedic Sanskrit) (c. 700-400 BCE) list rules for the construction of sacrificial fire altars. Most mathematical problems considered in the Sulba Sutras spring from "a single theological requirement," that of constructing fire altars which have different shapes but occupy the same area. The altars were required to be constructed of five layers of burnt brick, with the further condition that each layer consist of 200 bricks and that no two adjacent layers have congruent arrangements of bricks.
According to , the Sulba Sutras contain "the earliest extant verbal expression of the Pythagorean Theorem in the world, although it had already been known to the Old Babylonians." The diagonal rope () of an oblong (rectangle) produces both which the flank (parsvamani) and the horizontal () produce separately." Since the statement is a sutra, it is necessarily compressed and what the ropes produce is not elaborated on, but the context clearly implies the square areas constructed on their lengths, and would have been explained so by the teacher to the student.
They contain lists of Pythagorean triples, which are particular cases of Diophantine equations.
They also contain statements (that with hindsight we know to be approximate) about squaring the circle and "circling the square."
Baudhayana (c. 8th century BCE) composed the Baudhayana Sulba Sutra, the best-known Sulba Sutra, which contains examples of simple Pythagorean triples, such as: , , , , and as well as a statement of the Pythagorean theorem for the sides of a square: "The rope which is stretched across the diagonal of a square produces an area double the size of the original square." It also contains the general statement of the Pythagorean theorem (for the sides of a rectangle): "The rope stretched along the length of the diagonal of a rectangle makes an area which the vertical and horizontal sides make together." Baudhayana gives a formula for the square root of two,
-
The formula is accurate up to five decimal places, the true value being This formula is similar in structure to the formula found on a Mesopotamian tablet from the Old Babylonian period (1900-1600 BCE):
which expresses in the sexagesimal system, and which too is accurate up to 5 decimal places (after rounding).
According to mathematician S. G. Dani, the Babylonian cuneiform tablet Plimpton 322 written ca. 1850 BCE "contains fifteen Pythagorean triples with quite large entries, including (13500, 12709, 18541) which is a primitive triple, indicating, in particular, that there was sophisticated understanding on the topic" in Mesopotamia in 1850 BCE. "Since these tablets predate the Sulbasutras period by several centuries, taking into account the contextual appearance of some of the triples, it is reasonable to expect that similar understanding would have been there in India." Dani goes on to say:
"As the main objective of the Sulvasutras was to describe the constructions of altars and the geometric principles involved in them, the subject of Pythagorean triples, even if it had been well understood may still not have featured in the Sulvasutras. The occurrence of the triples in the Sulvasutras is comparable to mathematics that one may encounter in an introductory book on architecture or another similar applied area, and
would not correspond directly to the overall knowledge on the topic at that time. Since, unfortunately, no other contemporaneous sources have been found it may never be possible to settle this issue satisfactorily."
In all, three Sulba Sutras were composed. The remaining two, the Manava Sulba Sutra composed by Manava (fl. 750-650 BCE) and the Apastamba Sulba Sutra, composed by Apastamba (c. 600 BCE), contained results similar to the Baudhayana Sulba Sutra.
Classical period
In the Bakhshali manuscript, there is a handful of geometric problems (including problems about volumes of irregular solids). The Bakhshali manuscript also "employs a decimal place value system with a dot for zero." Aryabhata's Aryabhatiya (499 CE) includes the computation of areas and volumes.
Brahmagupta wrote his astronomical work in 628 CE. Chapter 12, containing 66 Sanskrit verses, was divided into two sections: "basic operations" (including cube roots, fractions, ratio and proportion, and barter) and "practical mathematics" (including mixture, mathematical series, plane figures, stacking bricks, sawing of timber, and piling of grain). In the latter section, he stated his famous theorem on the diagonals of a cyclic quadrilateral:
Brahmagupta's theorem: If a cyclic quadrilateral has diagonals that are perpendicular to each other, then the perpendicular line drawn from the point of intersection of the diagonals to any side of the quadrilateral always bisects the opposite side.
Chapter 12 also included a formula for the area of a cyclic quadrilateral (a generalization of Heron's formula), as well as a complete description of rational triangles (i.e. triangles with rational sides and rational areas).
Brahmagupta's formula: The area, A, of a cyclic quadrilateral with sides of lengths a, b, c, d, respectively, is given by
-
where s, the semiperimeter, given by:
Brahmagupta's Theorem on rational triangles: A triangle with rational sides and rational area is of the form:
for some rational numbers and .
Kerala period
The Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics was founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama in Kerala, South India and included among its members: Parameshvara, Neelakanta Somayaji, Jyeshtadeva, Achyuta Pisharati, Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri and Achyuta Panikkar. It flourished between the 14th and 16th centuries and the original discoveries of the school seems to have ended with Narayana Bhattathiri (1559-1632).
The results obtained by the Kerala school include the (infinite) geometric series: for This formula was already known, for example, in the work of the 10th century Arab mathematician, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, 965-1039).
Chinese geometry
In ancient China, the earliest simple mathematical work stemmed back to the court records of divination for the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 BC-1050 BC), while the famous philosophical and cosmological work of the I Ching during the Zhou Dynasty (1050 BC-256 BC) had a complex arrangement of mathematical hexagrams. However, the first definitive work (or at least oldest existent) on geometry in China was the Mo Jing, the Mohist canon of the early utilitarian philosopher Mozi (470 BC-390 BC). It was compiled years after his death by his later followers around the year 330 BC. Although the Mo Jing is the oldest existent book on geometry in China, there is the possibility that even older written material exists. However, due to the infamous Burning of the Books in the political maneauver by the Qin Dynasty ruler Qin Shihuang (r. 221 BC-210 BC), multitudes of written literature created before his time was purged. In addition, the Mo Jing presents geometrical concepts in mathematics that are perhaps too advanced not to have had a previous geometrical base or mathematic background to work upon.
The Mo Jing described various aspects of many fields associated with physical science, and provided a small wealth of information on mathematics as well. It provided an 'atomic' definition of the geometric point, stating that a line is separated into parts, and the part which has no remaining parts (i.e. cannot be divided into smaller parts) and thus forms the extreme end of a line is a point. Much like Euclid's first and third definitions and Plato's 'beginning of a line', the Mo Jing stated that "a point may stand at the end (of a line) or at its beginning like a head-presentation in childbirth. (As to its invisibility) there is nothing similar to it." Similar to the atomists of Democritus, the Mo Jing stated that a point is the smallest unit, and cannot be cut in half, since 'nothing' cannot be halved. It stated that two lines of equal length will always finish at the same place, while providing definitions for the comparison of lengths and for parallels, along with principles of space and bounded space. It also described the fact that planes without the quality of thickness cannot be piled up since they cannot mutually touch. The book provided definitions for circumference, diameter, and radius, along with the definition of volume.
The Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) period of China witnessed a new flourishing of mathematics. One of the oldest Chinese mathematical texts to present geometric progressions was the Suàn shù shu of 186 BC, during the Western Han era. The mathematician, inventor, and astronomer Zhang Heng (78-139 AD) used geometrical formulas to solve mathematical problems. Although rough estimates for pi (p) were given in the Zhou Li (compiled in the 2nd century BC), it was Zhang Heng who was the first to make a concerted effort at creating a more accurate formula for pi. This in turn would be made more accurate by later Chinese such as Zu Chongzhi (429-500 AD). Zhang Heng approximated pi as 730/232 (or approx 3.1466), although he used another formula of pi in finding a spherical volume, using the square root of 10 (or approx 3.162) instead. Zu Chongzhi's best approximation was between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927, with 355/113 (??, Milü, detailed approximation) and 22/7 (??, Yuelü, rough approximation) being the other notable approximation. In comparison to later works, the formula for pi given by the French mathematician François Viète (1540-1603) fell halfway between Zu's approximations.
The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art
The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, the title of which first appeared by 179 AD on a bronze inscription, was edited and commented on by the 3rd century mathematician Liu Hui from the Kingdom of Cao Wei. This book included many problems where geometry was applied, such as finding surface areas for squares and circles, the volumes of solids in various three dimensional shapes, and included the use of the Pythagorean theorem. The book provided illustrated proof for the Pythagorean theorem, contained a written dialogue between of the earlier Duke of Zhou and Shang Gao on the properties of the right angle triangle and the Pythagorean theorem, while also referring to the astronomical gnomon, the circle and square, as well as measurements of heights and distances. The editor Liu Hui listed pi as 3.141014 by using a 192 sided polygon, and then calculated pi as 3.14159 using a 3072 sided polygon. This was more accurate than Liu Hui's contemporary Wang Fan, a mathematician and astronomer from Eastern Wu, would render pi as 3.1555 by using 142/45. Liu Hui also wrote of mathematical surveying to calculate distance measurements of depth, height, width, and surface area. In terms of solid geometry, he figured out that a wedge with rectangular base and both sides sloping could be broken down into a pyramid and a tetrahedral wedge. He also figured out that a wedge with trapezoid base and both sides sloping could be made to give two tetrahedral wedges separated by a pyramid. Furthermore, Liu Hui described Cavalieri's principle on volume, as well as Gaussian elimination. From the Nine Chapters, it listed the following geometrical formulas that were known by the time of the Former Han Dynasty (202 BCE–9 CE).
Areas for the
- Square
- Rectangle
- Circle
- Isosceles triangle
- Trapezium
- Rhomboid
- Trapezoid
- Double trapezium
- Segment of a circle
- Annulus (annular space between two circles)
Volumes for the
- Parallel-piped with two square surfaces
- Parallel-piped with no square surfaces
- Pyramid
- Frustum of pyramid with square base
- Frustum of pyramid with rectangular base of unequal sides
- Cube
- Prism
- Wedge with rectangular base and both sides sloping
- Wedge with trapezoid base and both sides sloping
- Tetrahedral wedge
- Frustum of a wedge of the second type (used for applications in engineering)
- Cylinder
- Cone with circular base
- Frustum of a cone
- Sphere
Continuing the geometrical legacy of ancient China, there were many later figures to come, including the famed astronomer and mathematician Shen Kuo (1031-1095 AD), Yang Hui (1238-1298 AD) who discovered Pascal's Triangle, Xu Guangqi (1562-1633 AD), and many others.
Greek geometry
Classical Greek geometry
For the ancient Greek mathematicians, geometry was the crown jewel of their sciences, reaching a completeness and perfection of methodology that no other branch of their knowledge had attained. They expanded the range of geometry to many new kinds of figures, curves, surfaces, and solids; they changed its methodology from trial-and-error to logical deduction; they recognized that geometry studies "eternal forms", or abstractions, of which physical objects are only approximations; and they developed the idea of an "axiomatic theory", which, for more than 2000 years, was regarded to be the ideal paradigm for all scientific theories.
Thales and Pythagoras
Thales (635-543 BC) of Miletus (now in southwestern Turkey), was the first to whom deduction in mathematics is attributed. There are five geometric propositions for which he wrote deductive proofs, though his proofs have not survived. Pythagoras (582-496 BC) of Ionia, and later, Italy, then colonized by Greeks, may have been a student of Thales, and traveled to Babylon and Egypt. The theorem that bears his name may not have been his discovery, but he was probably one of the first to give a deductive proof of it. He gathered a group of students around him to study mathematics, music, and philosophy, and together they discovered most of what high school students learn today in their geometry courses. In addition, they made the profound discovery of incommensurable lengths and irrational numbers. (There is no evidence that Thales provided any deductive proofs, and in fact, deductive mathematical proofs did not appear until after Parmemides. At best, all that we can say about Thales is that he introduced various geometric theorems to the Greeks. The idea that mathematics was from its inception deductive is false. At the time of Thales, mathematics was inductive. This means that Thales would have "provided" empirical and direct proofs, but not deductive proofs.)
Plato
Plato (427-347 BC), the philosopher most esteemed by the Greeks, had inscribed above the entrance to his famous school, "Let none ignorant of geometry enter here." Though he was not a mathematician himself, his views on mathematics had great influence. Mathematicians thus accepted his belief that geometry should use no tools but compass and straightedge – never measuring instruments such as a marked ruler or a protractor, because these were a workman’s tools, not worthy of a scholar. This dictum led to a deep study of possible compass and straightedge constructions, and three classic construction problems: how to use these tools to trisect an angle, to construct a cube twice the volume of a given cube, and to construct a square equal in area to a given circle. The proofs of the impossibility of these constructions, finally achieved in the 19th century, led to important principles regarding the deep structure of the real number system. Aristotle (384-322 BC), Plato’s greatest pupil, wrote a treatise on methods of reasoning used in deductive proofs (see Logic) which was not substantially improved upon until the 19th century.
Hellenistic geometry
Euclid
Euclid (c. 325-265 BC), of Alexandria, probably a student of one of Plato’s students, wrote a treatise in 13 books (chapters), titled The Elements of Geometry, in which he presented geometry in an ideal axiomatic form, which came to be known as Euclidean geometry. The treatise is not a compendium of all that the Hellenistic mathematicians knew at the time about geometry; Euclid himself wrote eight more advanced books on geometry. We know from other references that Euclid’s was not the first elementary geometry textbook, but it was so much superior that the others fell into disuse and were lost. He was brought to the university at Alexandria by Ptolemy I, King of Egypt.
The Elements began with definitions of terms, fundamental geometric principles (called axioms or postulates), and general quantitative principles (called common notions) from which all the rest of geometry could be logically deduced. Following are his five axioms, somewhat paraphrased to make the English easier to read.
- Any two points can be joined by a straight line.
- Any finite straight line can be extended in a straight line.
- A circle can be drawn with any center and any radius.
- All right angles are equal to each other.
- If two straight lines in a plane are crossed by another straight line (called the transversal), and the interior angles between the two lines and the transversal lying on one side of the transversal add up to less than two right angles, then on that side of the transversal, the two lines extended will intersect (also called the parallel postulate).
It was soon observed, and no doubt Euclid himself knew, that his fifth axiom could be replaced by the shorter statement “Given a line and a point not on the line, there is only one line through the given point and in the same plane with the given line that does not intersect the given line.” This is called Playfair’s Axiom, after the British teacher who proposed to make the replacement in all the school textbooks.
The axioms, according to Plato, should be simple and self-evident principles, so clearly true that they need no proof. Euclid’s first four axioms meet this criterion, but the fifth, even if replaced by Playfair’s Axiom, is not simple, and most would say not self-evident like the first four. The fifth resembled more the theorems that Euclid proved from the axioms. Furthermore, Euclid developed a substantial part of his theory of triangles without using the Fifth Axiom. The speculation arose, probably during Euclid’s lifetime, that the Fifth Axiom can and should be proved as a theorem from the first four, and thus is unnecessary as an axiom. Thus began many centuries of attempts to prove the Fifth Axiom, and the question was not settled until the 19th century.
Archimedes
Archimedes (287-212 BC), of Syracuse, Sicily, when it was a Greek city-state, is often considered to be the greatest of the Greek mathematicians, and occasionally even named as one of the three greatest of all time (along with Isaac Newton and Carl Friedrich Gauss). Had he not been a mathematician, he would still be remembered as a great physicist, engineer, and inventor. In his mathematics, he developed methods very similar to the coordinate systems of analytic geometry, and the limiting process of integral calculus. The only element lacking for the creation of these fields was an efficient algebraic notation in which to express his concepts.
After Archimedes
After Archimedes, Hellenistic mathematics began to decline. There were a few minor stars yet to come, but the golden age of geometry was over. Proclus (410-485), author of Commentary on the First Book of Euclid, was one of the last important players in Hellenistic geometry. He was a competent geometer, but more importantly, he was a superb commentator on the works that preceded him. Much of that work did not survive to modern times, and is known to us only through his commentary. The Roman Republic and Empire that succeeded and absorbed the Greek city-states produced excellent engineers, but no mathematicians of note.
The great Library of Alexandria was later burned. There is a growing consensus among historians that the Library of Alexandria likely suffered from several destructive events, but that the destruction of Alexandria's pagan temples in the late 4th century was probably the most severe and final one. The evidence for that destruction is the most definitive and secure. Caesar's invasion may well have led to the loss of some 40,000-70,000 scrolls in a warehouse adjacent to the port (as Luciano Canfora argues, they were likely copies produced by the Library intended for export), but it is unlikely to have affected the Library or Museum, given that there is ample evidence that both existed later.
Civil wars, decreasing investments in maintenance and acquisition of new scrolls and generally declining interest in non-religious pursuits likely contributed to a reduction in the body of material available in the Library, especially in the fourth century. The Serapeum was certainly destroyed by Theophilus in 391, and the Museum and Library may have fallen victim to the same campaign.
Islamic geometry
The Islamic Caliphate (Islamic Empire) established across the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, Portugal, Persia and parts of Persia, began around 640 CE. Islamic mathematics during this period was primarily algebraic rather than geometric, though there were important works on geometry. Scholarship in Europe declined and eventually the Hellenistic works of antiquity were lost to them, and survived only in the Islamic centers of learning.
Although the Muslim mathematicians are most famed for their work on algebra, number theory and number systems, they also made considerable contributions to geometry, trigonometry and mathematical astronomy, and were responsible for the development of algebraic geometry. Geometrical magnitudes were treated as "algebraic objects" by most Muslim mathematicians however.
The successors of Mu?ammad ibn Musa al-?warizmi who was Persian Scholar, mathematician and Astronomer who invented the Algorithm in Mathematics which is the base for Computer Science (born 780) undertook a systematic application of arithmetic to algebra, algebra to arithmetic, both to trigonometry, algebra to the Euclidean theory of numbers, algebra to geometry, and geometry to algebra. This was how the creation of polynomial algebra, combinatorial analysis, numerical analysis, the numerical solution of equations, the new elementary theory of numbers, and the geometric construction of equations arose.
Al-Mahani (born 820) conceived the idea of reducing geometrical problems such as duplicating the cube to problems in algebra. Al-Karaji (born 953) completely freed algebra from geometrical operations and replaced them with the arithmetical type of operations which are at the core of algebra today.
Thabit family and other early geometers
Although Thabit ibn Qurra (known as Thebit in Latin) (born 836) contributed to a number of areas in mathematics, where he played an important role in preparing the way for such important mathematical discoveries as the extension of the concept of number to (positive) real numbers, integral calculus, theorems in spherical trigonometry, analytic geometry, and non-Euclidean geometry. In astronomy Thabit was one of the first reformers of the Ptolemaic system, and in mechanics he was a founder of statics. An important geometrical aspect of Thabit's work was his book on the composition of ratios. In this book, Thabit deals with arithmetical operations applied to ratios of geometrical quantities. The Greeks had dealt with geometric quantities but had not thought of them in the same way as numbers to which the usual rules of arithmetic could be applied. By introducing arithmetical operations on quantities previously regarded as geometric and non-numerical, Thabit started a trend which led eventually to the generalisation of the number concept.
In some respects, Thabit is critical of the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, particularly regarding motion. It would seem that here his ideas are based on an acceptance of using arguments concerning motion in his geometrical arguments. Another important contribution Thabit made to geometry was his generalization of the Pythagorean theorem, which he extended from special right triangles to all triangles in general, along with a general proof.
Ibrahim ibn Sinan ibn Thabit (born 908), who introduced a method of integration more general than that of Archimedes, and al-Quhi (born 940) were leading figures in a revival and continuation of Greek higher geometry in the Islamic world. These mathematicians, and in particular Ibn al-Haytham, studied optics and investigated the optical properties of mirrors made from conic sections.
Astronomy, time-keeping and geography provided other motivations for geometrical and trigonometrical research. For example Ibrahim ibn Sinan and his grandfather Thabit ibn Qurra both studied curves required in the construction of sundials. Abu'l-Wafa and Abu Nasr Mansur both applied spherical geometry to astronomy.
Ibn al-Haytham, Omar Khayyám, and Sharafeddin Tusi
In the early 11th century, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) made the first attempt at proving the Euclidean parallel postulate, the fifth postulate in Euclid's Elements, using a proof by contradiction, where he introduced the concept of motion and transformation into geometry. He formulated the Lambert quadrilateral, which Boris Abramovich Rozenfeld names the "Ibn al-Haytham–Lambert quadrilateral", and his attempted proof also shows similarities to Playfair's axiom.
Omar Khayyám (born 1048) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and poet who described his philosophy through poems known as quatrains in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Along with his fame as a poet, he was also famous during his lifetime as a mathematician, well known for inventing the general method of solving cubic equations by intersecting a parabola with a circle. In addition he discovered the binomial expansion, and authored criticisms of Euclid's theories of parallels which made their way to England, where they contributed to the eventual development of non-Euclidean geometry. Omar Khayyam also combined the use of trigonometry and approximation theory to provide methods of solving algebraic equations by geometrical means. He was mostly responsible for the development of algebraic geometry.
In a paper written by Khayyam before his famous algebra text Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, he considers the problem: "Find a point on a quadrant of a circle in such manner that when a normal is dropped from the point to one of the bounding radii, the ratio of the normal's length to that of the radius equals the ratio of the segments determined by the foot of the normal." Khayyam shows that this problem is equivalent to solving a second problem: "Find a right triangle having the property that the hypotenuse equals the sum of one leg plus the altitude on the hypotenuse." This problem in turn led Khayyam to solve the cubic equation x3 + 200x = 20x2 + 2000 and he found a positive root of this cubic by considering the intersection of a rectangular hyperbola and a circle. An approximate numerical solution was then found by interpolation in trigonometric tables. Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that Khayyam states that the solution of this cubic requires the use of conic sections and that it cannot be solved by compass and straightedge, a result which would not be proved for another 750 years.
His Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra contained a complete classification of cubic equations with geometric solutions found by means of intersecting conic sections. In fact Khayyam gives an interesting historical account in which he claims that the Greeks had left nothing on the theory of cubic equations. Indeed, as Khayyam writes, the contributions by earlier writers such as al-Mahani and al-Khazin were to translate geometric problems into algebraic equations (something which was essentially impossible before the work of Mu?ammad ibn Musa al-?warizmi). However, Khayyam himself seems to have been the first to conceive a general theory of cubic equations.
In Commentaries on the difficult postulates of Euclid's book Khayyam made a contribution to non-Euclidean geometry, although this was not his intention. In trying to prove the parallel postulate he accidentally proved properties of figures in non-Euclidean geometries. Khayyam also gave important results on ratios in this book, extending Euclid's work to include the multiplication of ratios. The importance of Khayyam's contribution is that he examined both Euclid's definition of equality of ratios (which was that first proposed by Eudoxus) and the definition of equality of ratios as proposed by earlier Islamic mathematicians such as al-Mahani which was based on continued fractions. Khayyam proved that the two definitions are equivalent. He also posed the question of whether a ratio can be regarded as a number but leaves the question unanswered.
The Khayyam-Saccheri quadrilateral was first considered by Omar Khayyam in the late 11th century in Book I of Explanations of the Difficulties in the Postulates of Euclid. Unlike many commentators on Euclid before and after him (including of course Saccheri), Khayyam was not trying to prove the parallel postulate as such but to derive it from an equivalent postulate he formulated from "the principles of the Philosopher" (Aristotle):
- Two convergent straight lines intersect and it is impossible for two convergent straight lines to diverge in the direction in which they converge.
Khayyam then considered the three cases right, obtuse, and acute that the summit angles of a Saccheri quadrilateral can take and after proving a number of theorems about them, he (correctly) refuted the obtuse and acute cases based on his postulate and hence derived the classic postulate of Euclid. It wasn't until 600 years later that Giordano Vitale made an advance on the understanding of this quadrilateral in his book Euclide restituo (1680, 1686), when he used it to prove that if three points are equidistant on the base AB and the summit CD, then AB and CD are everywhere equidistant. Saccheri himself based the whole of his long, heroic and ultimately flawed proof of the parallel postulate around the quadrilateral and its three cases, proving many theorems about its properties along the way.
Persian mathematician Sharafeddin Tusi (born 1135) did not follow the general development that came through al-Karaji's school of algebra but rather followed Khayyam's application of algebra to geometry. He wrote a treatise on cubic equations, which represents an essential contribution to another algebra which aimed to study curves by means of equations, thus inaugurating the study of algebraic geometry.
Other contributions to non-Euclidean geometry
In 1250, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, in his Al-risala al-shafiya'an al-shakk fi'l-khutut al-mutawaziya (Discussion Which Removes Doubt about Parallel Lines), wrote detailed critiques of the Euclidean parallel postulate and on Omar Khayyám's attempted proof a century earlier. Nasir al-Din attempted to derive a contradiction of the parallel postulate. His son, Sadr al-Din wrote a book on the subject in 1298, based on Nasir al-Din's later thoughts, which presented an argument for a hypothesis equivalent to the parallel postulate. Sadr al-Din's work was published in Rome in 1594 and was studied by European geometers. This work marked the starting point for Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri's work on the subject, and eventually the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry.
A proof from Sadr al-Din's work was quoted by John Wallis and Saccheri in the 17th and 18th centuries. They both derived their proofs of the parallel postulate from Sadr al-Din's work, while Saccheri also derived his Saccheri quadrilateral from Sadr al-Din, who himself based it on his father's work.
The theorems of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Omar Khayyam and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi on quadrilaterals, including the Lambert quadrilateral and Saccheri quadrilateral, were the first theorems on elliptical geometry and hyperbolic geometry, and along with their alternative postulates, such as Playfair's axiom, these works marked the beginning of non-Euclidean geometry and had a considerable influence on its development among later European geometers, including Witelo, Levi ben Gerson, Alfonso, John Wallis, and Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri.
Geometric architecture
Recent discoveries have shown that geometrical quasicrystal patterns were first employed in the girih tiles found in medieval Islamic architecture dating back over five centuries ago. In 2007, Professor Peter Lu of Harvard University and Professor Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University published a paper in the journal Science suggesting that girih tilings possessed properties consistent with self-similar fractal quasicrystalline tilings such as the Penrose tilings, predating them by five centuries.
Modern geometry
The 17th century
When Europe began to emerge from its Dark Ages, the Hellenistic and Islamic texts on geometry found in Islamic libraries were translated from Arabic into Latin. The rigorous deductive methods of geometry found in Euclid’s Elements of Geometry were relearned, and further development of geometry in the styles of both Euclid (Euclidean geometry) and Khayyam (algebraic geometry) continued, resulting in an abundance of new theorems and concepts, many of them very profound and elegant.
In the early 17th century, there were two important developments in geometry. The first and most important was the creation of analytic geometry, or geometry with coordinates and equations, by René Descartes (1596-1650) and Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665). This was a necessary precursor to the development of calculus and a precise quantitative science of physics. The second geometric development of this period was the systematic study of projective geometry by Girard Desargues (1591-1661). Projective geometry is the study of geometry without measurement, just the study of how points align with each other. There had been some early work in this area by Hellenistic geometers, notably Pappus (c. 340). The greatest flowering of the field occurred with Jean-Victor Poncelet (1788-1867).
In the late 17th century, calculus was developed independently and almost simultaneously by Isaac Newton (1642-1727) and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716). This was the beginning of a new field of mathematics now called analysis. Though not itself a branch of geometry, it is applicable to geometry, and it solved two families of problems that had long been almost intractable: finding tangent lines to odd curves, and finding areas enclosed by those curves. The methods of calculus reduced these problems mostly to straightforward matters of computation.
The 18th and 19th centuries
Non-Euclidean geometry
The old problem of proving Euclid’s Fifth Postulate, the "Parallel Postulate", from his first four postulates had never been forgotten. Beginning not long after Euclid, many attempted demonstrations were given, but all were later found to be faulty, through allowing into the reasoning some principle which itself had not been proved from the first four postulates. Though Omar Khayyám was also unsuccessful in proving the parallel postulate, his criticisms of Euclid's theories of parallels and his proof of properties of figures in non-Euclidean geometries contributed to the eventual development of non-Euclidean geometry. By 1700 a great deal had been discovered about what can be proved from the first four, and what the pitfalls were in attempting to prove the fifth. Saccheri, Lambert, and Legendre each did excellent work on the problem in the 18th century, but still fell short of success. In the early 19th century, Gauss, Johann Bolyai, and Lobatchewsky, each independently, took a different approach. Beginning to suspect that it was impossible to prove the Parallel Postulate, they set out to develop a self-consistent geometry in which that postulate was false. In this they were successful, thus creating the first non-Euclidean geometry. By 1854, Bernhard Riemann, a student of Gauss, had applied methods of calculus in a ground-breaking study of the intrinsic (self-contained) geometry of all smooth surfaces, and thereby found a different non-Euclidean geometry. This work of Riemann later became fundamental for Einstein's theory of relativity.
It remained to be proved mathematically that the non-Euclidean geometry was just as self-consistent as Euclidean geometry, and this was first accomplished by Beltrami in 1868. With this, non-Euclidean geometry was established on an equal mathematical footing with Euclidean geometry.
While it was now known that different geometric theories were mathematically possible, the question remained, "Which one of these theories is correct for our physical space?" The mathematical work revealed that this question must be answered by physical experimentation, not mathematical reasoning, and uncovered the reason why the experimentation must involve immense (interstellar, not earth-bound) distances. With the development of relativity theory in physics, this question became vastly more complicated.
Introduction of mathematical rigor
All the work related to the Parallel Postulate revealed that it was quite difficult for a geometer to separate his logical reasoning from his intuitive understanding of physical space, and, moreover, revealed the critical importance of doing so. Careful examination had uncovered some logical inadequacies in Euclid's reasoning, and some unstated geometric principles to which Euclid sometimes appealed. This critique paralleled the crisis occurring in calculus and analysis regarding the meaning of infinite processes such as convergence and continuity. In geometry, there was a clear need for a new set of axioms, which would be complete, and which in no way relied on pictures we draw or on our intuition of space. Such axioms were given by David Hilbert in 1894 in his dissertation Grundlagen der Geometrie (Foundations of Geometry). Some other complete sets of axioms had been given a few years earlier, but did not match Hilbert's in economy, elegance, and similarity to Euclid's axioms.
Analysis situs, or topology
In the mid-18th century, it became apparent that certain progressions of mathematical reasoning recurred when similar ideas were studied on the number line, in two dimensions, and in three dimensions. Thus the general concept of a metric space was created so that the reasoning could be done in more generality, and then applied to special cases. This method of studying calculus- and analysis-related concepts came to be known as analysis situs, and later as topology. The important topics in this field were properties of more general figures, such as connectedness and boundaries, rather than properties like straightness, and precise equality of length and angle measurements, which had been the focus of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry. Topology soon became a separate field of major importance, rather than a sub-field of geometry or analysis.
The 20th century
Developments in algebraic geometry included the study of curves and surfaces over finite fields as demonstrated by the works of among others Anndre Weil, Alexander Grothendieck, and Jean-Pierre Serre as well as over the real or complex numbers. Finite geometry itself, the study of spaces with only finitely many points, found applications in coding theory and cryptography. With the advent of the computer, new disciplines such as computational geometry or digital geometry deal with geometric algorithms, discrete representations of geometric data, and so forth.
See also
External links
- by Antonio Gutierrez.
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- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
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