The normal road to geometry: in Euclid's \textit{Elements} and the mathematical competence of his audience

DOI10.1017/S0009838814000457MaRDI QIDQ2834388zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Stéphanie van der Pas

Publication date 29 November 2016

Published in The Classical Quarterly (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1017/s0009838814000457

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of Greek and Roman mathematics (01A20)

Review text

A pragmatic analysis of the use of \(\delta\acute{\eta}\) in Euclid's \textit{Elements}, limited to Books 1, 7, and 9 (given that these ``contain relatively simple and short propositions, which allows for an analysis that is not unnecessarily complex on account of mathematical difficulties). There are 151 cases of \(\delta\acute{\eta}\) within those books, from a total of 703 in all of the \textit{Elements}. In 142 of those 151 occurrences, one encounters its use in one of the following five uses: (1) ``proceeding to the next step; (2) ``transferring from enunciation to proofsetting; (3) ``analogous cases; (4) ``exclusive disjunctions; (5) ``rephrasing. The function of each of these in their respective proofs, as well as that of the isolated cases, belonging to none of the five uses, are analyzed in detail.NEWLINENEWLINEThe overall conclusion is that ``In its most abstract sense, the use of \(\delta\acute{\eta}\) in Euclid's \textit{Elements} can be tentatively characterized as signalling that Euclid expects the statement to be obvious in some sense to those audience members who are familiar with mathematical proof procedures. This also indicates that a ``standardization [of proof structures] had developed to such an extent that Euclid could confidently express the expectation of his audience's familiarity with the unwritten rules of mathematical proof procedures.

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Cited in

(3)

• On the elocution of ekthesis in classic Greek geometry
• Conjunction and disjunction in Euclid's Elements
• How much does a theorem cost?

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