CSCH.3070 History of Geometry
This is geometry, but not like you learned it in high school. We will start with a careful reading of the first geometry textbook from 300 BCE, Euclid's Elements. Next we jump to the 17th Century to see the kinds of innovations introduced by such great thinkers as Descartes and Newton. Finally, we end with the mind-bending world of non-Euclidean Geometry, in which the sum of the angles in a triangle is always less than 180° and there are no rectangles at all! We will also read some short philosophical texts and a modern novel, all of which deal with the real theme of this course: How can we be absolutely certain of anything at all?
LA