The dual of Pasch's axiom (Q1185865)

In this paper partial linear spaces are studied satisfying the dual of Pasch's axiom, and in which no point is collinear to just one point of a line. Starting with such a space, two related geometries are constructed on the same point set, but with different line set, and also satisfying the dual of Pasch's axiom. Exploiting the existence of these 3 spaces, uniform proofs for some old and new characterizations of partial linear spaces and graphs related to the Grassmannians of projective spaces and to hyperbolic lines in symplectic spaces are given. As an application of the geometric results obtained, a class of groups generated by a conjugacy class of subgroups of order 3, in which any two elements either commute or generate a subgroup isomorphic to \(Alt_ 4\), \(Alt_ 5\) or \(SL_ 2(3)\), is classified.