Logical and historical remarks on Saccheri's geometry (Q2534141)

The author is concerned with the geometry contained in the book ``Euclides ab omni naevo vindicatus'', 1733, by \textit{Girolamo Saccheri}. After posing the questior in \S 1, the author analyses in \S 2 the paralogisms committed by G. Saccheri, when this rejects the geometries of the obtuse angle (elliptic) and of the acute angle (hyperbolic). In \S 3 he explains Saccheri's method, based mainly in the law of Clavius \((\sim p\supset p):\supset p\), and shows its influence and far reaching consequences in the evolution of the concept of geometry in Saccheri, Lambert, Taurinus and Gauss. Finally in \S 4 the author tries to make understandable the motives of Saccheri's paralogisms, the principal motif being the historical and philosophical contemporary situation.