=Bibliography.= Petersen, Methods and Theories for the Solution
of Geometric Problems of Construction, Copenhagen, 1879, a
curious piece of English and an extreme view of the subject,
but well worth consulting; Alexandroff, Problemes de geometrie
elementaire, Paris, 1899, with a German translation in 1903;
Loomis, Original Investigation; or, How to attack an Exercise
in Geometry, Boston, 1901; Sauvage, Les Lieux geometriques en
geometrie elementaire, Paris, 1893; Hadamard, Lecons de
geometrie, p. 261, Paris, 1898; Duhamel, Des Methodes dans les
sciences de raisonnement, 3^e ed., Paris, 1885; Henrici and
Treutlein, Lehrbuch der Elementar-Geometrie, Leipzig, 3. Aufl.,
1897; Henrici, Congruent Figures, London, 1879.
CHAPTER XIV
BOOK I AND ITS PROPOSITIONS
Having considered the nature of the geometry that we have inherited, and
some of the opportunities for improving upon the methods of presenting
it, the next question that arises is the all-important one of the
subject matter, What shall geometry be in detail? Shall it be the text
or the sequence of Euclid? Few teachers have any such idea at the
present time. Shall it be a mere dabbling with forms that are seen in
mechanics or architecture, with no serious logical sequence? This is an
equally dangerous extreme. Shall it be an entirely new style of geometry
based upon groups of motions? This may sometime be developed, but as yet
it exists in the future if it exists at all, since the recent efforts in
this respect are generally quite as ill suited to a young pupil as is
Euclid's "Elements" itself.
No one can deny the truth of M. Bourlet's recent assertion that
"Industry, daughter of the science of the nineteenth century, reigns
to-day the mistress of the world; she has transformed all ancient
methods, and she has absorbed in herself almost all human activity."[57]
Neither can one deny the justice of his comparison of Euclid with a
noble piece of Gothic architecture and of his assertion that as modern
life demands another type of building, so it demands another type of
geometry.
But what does this mean? That geometry is to exist merely as it touches
industry, or that bad architecture is to replace the good? By no means.
A building should to-day have steam heat and elevators and electric
lights, but it should be constructed of just as enduring materials as
the Parthenon, and it should have lines as pleasing as those of a Gothic
facade. Architecture should still be artistic and construction should
still be substantial, else a building can never endure. So geometry must
still exemplify good logic and must still bring to the pupil a feeling
of exaltation, or it will perish and become a mere relic in the museum
of human culture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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