Mathematics in perspective: Desargues, la Hire, le Poîvre (Q2052228)

This paper proposes to look at Girard Desargues' geometrical work as being a practice of perspective applied to geometry -- rather than the converse, as it is usually seen, namely mathematics applied to the ``art of perspective''. This claim is supported by a close mathematical and historical exposition of a selection of results from Desargues' works, in particular his \textit{Brouillon projet}. It is followed by a similar analysis of the works of Desargues' followers, Philippe de la Hire and Jacques-François le Poîvre. According to the author, through them, the transformation of the plan truly becomes an object of geometry, a first step towards Klein's notion of group of transformation. The paper takes the reader through a series of explanations of Desargues', La Hire's and Le Poîvre's results, unfolding the sometimes very dense original texts. This leads to the author's main conclusion: it is by studying perspective \textit{in art}, that Desargues was inspired to ``revolutionise'' geometry -- or, as the author puts it ``it is the painters who allowed mathematicians to free themselves from the stranglehold of Euclidian geometry'' (my translation) by giving Desargues the means to develop projective geometry and subsequently allowing the development of a geometry that takes into account the subject as an observer. While this paper can be read as a standalone paper, it is certainly better understood when read together with the several other papers that Jean-Yves Briend published with Marie Anglade on Desargues' \textit{Brouillon projet}.