Here, then, is the result of several years of labor by a somewhat
radical organization, fostered by excellent mathematicians, and carried
on in a country where elementary geometry is held in highest esteem, and
where Euclid was thought unsuited to the needs of the beginner. The
number of propositions remains substantially the same as in Euclid, and
the introduction of some unusable logic tends to counterbalance the
improvement in sequence of the propositions. The report provoked
thought; it shook the Euclid stronghold; it was probably instrumental in
bringing about the present upheaval in geometry in England, but as a
working syllabus it has not appealed to the world as the great
improvement upon Euclid's "Elements" that was hoped by many of its early
advocates.
The same association published later, and republished in 1905, a "Report
on the Teaching of Geometry," in which it returned to Euclid, modifying
the "Elements" by omitting certain propositions, changing the order and
proof of others, and introducing a few new theorems. It seems to reduce
the propositions to be proved in plane geometry to about one hundred
fifteen, and it recommends the omission of the incommensurable case.
This number is, however, somewhat misleading, for Euclid frequently puts
in one proposition what we in America, for educational reasons, find it
better to treat in two, or even three, propositions. This report,
therefore, reaches about the same conclusion as to the geometric facts
to be mastered as is reached by our later textbook writers in America.
It is not extreme, and it stands for good mathematics.
In the United States the influence of our early wars with England, and
the sympathy of France at that time, turned the attention of our
scholars of a century ago from Cambridge to Paris as a mathematical
center. The influx of French mathematics brought with it such works as
Legendre's geometry (1794) and Bourdon's algebra, and made known the
texts of Lacroix, Bertrand, and Bezout. Legendre's geometry was the
result of the efforts of a great mathematician at syllabus-making, a
natural thing in a country that had early broken away from Euclid.
Legendre changed the Greek sequence, sought to select only propositions
that are necessary to a good understanding of the subject, and added a
good course in solid geometry. His arrangement, with the number of
propositions as given in the Davies translation, is as follows:
Book I. Rectilinear figures 31
Book II. Ratio and proportion 14
Book III. The circle 48
Book IV. Proportions of figures and areas 51
Book V. Polygons and circles 17
----
Total for plane geometry 161
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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