A Euclidean proof for the fourth postulate

DOI10.1016/J.HM.2024.12.001MaRDI QIDQ7010055zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors José Gil-Férez, Piotr Błaszczyk, M. Andrew Moshier, Alberto Naibo, Marco Panza, Jean-Michel Salanskis

Publication date 19 March 2025

Published in Historia Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1016/J.HM.2024.12.001

zbMATH Keywords

Euclid's \textit{Elements}Euclid's fourth postulateEuclid's geometry

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of Greek and Roman mathematics (01A20) History of geometry (51-03)

Review text

After a survey of all the applications of Postulate 4 in Book I of Euclid's \textit{Elements}, a discussion of a possible alternative to it -- ``All pairs of adjacent angles whose noncommon sides are collinear are equal --, an analysis of Proclus's two proofs of Postulate 4, a discussion of Euclid's uses of superposition in the proofs of Propositions I.4 and I.8, a model for the independence of those two propositions from Euclid's first principles, to emphasize the need for the superposition technique, to which Euclid appeals for their proof, a comparison of the use of superposition in Proclus and Euclid, an argued rejection of \textit{R. J. Wagner}'s constructive interpretation of superposition in [Hist. Math. 10, 63--70 (1983; Zbl 0509.01004)], comes the central claim of the paper: That Euclid did not need Postulate 4. This is shown by first providing a new proof of Proposition I.15, which makes no use of Postulate 4, and then proving Propositions I.16, I.18, I.19, I.20, I.22, and I.23 just the way Euclid does. Proposition I.23 is then used to provide a proof of Postulate 4. The proofs only depend on Euclid's accepted propositions, none of which depends in turn on Postulate 4, and, once Propositions I.4 and I.8 have been established, require no further appeal to superposition.

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Cited in

(3)

• There is no obstruction to a Euclidean proof for the fourth postulate
• There is no Euclidean proof of the fourth postulate
• Absolute geometry with the fourth postulate

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