Talk:Euclid

Semi-protected edit request on 23 March 2021

Gwapo ako

No edit requested, closing. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:19, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

old bc/ad used instead of bce and ce.

You should use B.C.E. and C.E. instead of BC and AD as these are old, and should not be used in this article to make it modern. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saralizt13 (talk • contribs) 00:21, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Changing the portrait

From a layman's perspective, the current portrait of Euclid isn't revealing or provides what may be seen as an accurate depiction of the artist. Though the romantic/dramatic element isn't bad, it seems de Ribera made the portrait intentionally dark— which, on a webpage, makes it difficult to see. I propose switching the portrait to something like Euclid statue, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, UK - 20080315.jpg instead. GuardianH (talk) 09:30, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Well I'm not sure really what you mean by "accurate depiction", which would be essentially impossible in this case. I would prefer the current portrait, by a well established artist, rather than a rather random statue. In addition, since I don't trust readers to read the image captions, I suspect that have a marble statue (which evokes the ancient Greek sculpture) might make some assume they're seeing an authentic portrayal, where as a painting makes it obvious they are not. Then again, my first point is the crux of my disagreement. Aza24 (talk) 03:39, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

That is really close to my reasoning, and that's why I changed the image in the infobox. No portrait is a real portrait of Euclid, but this one at least is from a well-known artist. Artem.G (talk) 07:13, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Adding a source for the Elements

This page [1]https://myria.math.aegean.gr/elements is new and gives a free version of The Elements in both Modern Greek and Ancient Greek. Could this be added in the subsection "The Elements" of the section "external Links" ? Antonis.tsolomitis (talk) 13:55, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Antonis.tsolomitis, I would say it would be a better addition to the external links section of the Euclid's Elements article. This article is about Euclid in general, so it would be best to avoid too many links for specific topics related to him, and we already have two Elements links. Aza24 (talk) 23:39, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

"Euclid is best known for his thirteen-book treatise, the Elements (Greek: Εὐκλείδης; Stoicheia)." Huh? The Greek is unrelated to the latin version. Sorry - not qualified to edit, but it seems peculiar. Bob. 99.95.168.245 (talk) 01:57, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Now fixed, many thanks. Aza24 (talk) 03:50, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Scrambled sentence

In the description of the Elements, in the subsection Contents, this phrase makes no sense "a series of 20 definitions for basic concepts geometric concepts". I would make an edit but I am not sure what is intended JRGp (talk) 19:52, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

What was intended: "basic geometric concepts". Good spotting, fixed. -- Elphion (talk) 20:04, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 September 2023

I would like to add this reference among the sources online :

• Bernard Vitrac; Alain Herreman (2023). "MÉδÉE Manuscripts and Editions of Euclid's Elements".

Alain Herreman (talk) 10:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

A site that describes all of the various translations, redactions, commentaries, and published editions of Euclid (I think that's what this is?) seems like a nice idea, but I personally find this one to be baffling. If I click the link I get a huge graph of hundreds of nodes connected in an unexplained mishmash with overlapping illegible labels, which starts slowly zooming toward an arbitrary point. Mousing over any of the labels (?) pops up some mysterious text box with content such as "↔ @ d°=0-0; Neighborhoods : simple - complete, sources - complete - extended, targets - complete - extended, Select - Hide" which I can make no sense of. Clicking on some element (not quite sure if I am clicking the label or the graph edge, as they are all crammed together and overlapping) pops up a box in the corner which looks like it was supposed to have some text, but the inner content box is located mostly outside the container box so no text is visible. Regularly the UI seems to get stuck and not keep updating as my mouse moves – gets itself easily into some buggy/glitchy state. I think this project needs some significant design work before it could even potentially be useful to a general audience and suitable for link from Euclid's Elements. Even if improved I don't think a link to it belongs at this page about Euclid himself. I would recommend leading with some representation other than the giant graph, and including more meaningful explanatory introduction on the homepage. –jacobolus (t) 16:40, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

With that said, @Alain Herreman it seems like you are an expert on Euclid / The Elements. Both of these pages could use expert help, especially the Elements page. So I do hope you'll stick around if you have the time/energy to spare.

It would be great to have a well sourced scholarly summary (of whatever length anyone is willing to put the effort in to write, possibly spilling onto subsidiary/related pages if the scope of the article grows beyond reasonable bounds) explaining among other topics (0) the pre-history of the material in the Elements, and the best current understanding/speculation about how it came about / found its current form, (1) the structural organization of the text, its purpose/intent, and how that has been interpreted over time, (2) the history of transmission of the text, relationships between the most popular/influential translations and editions, etc. (3) the typical structure of propositions given and how they are imagined to have been taught or studied both originally and later in history, (4) the relation between constructions and provable theorems and some idea of how Greek geometers thought about constructions, (5) the use of diagrams including in topics that don't seem to be visual, and the known/speculated history of the diagrams through history, (6) the nature of the axiomatic system established and historical efforts to criticize or change it, (7) the relation of the Elements to other works, both contemporary and later (especially undiscussed so far is its relation to medieval mathematics/science written in Arabic), etc. [These are just ideas off the top of my head.. I'm sure any expert has other ideas of other topics that should be addressed or current sections that could use improvement.]

I also think we do a poor job summarizing the content of the Elements here, and if there's enough volunteer effort (of either experts or amateurs motivated to do careful research in available secondary sources) I think we'd benefit from having separate articles about each book of the Elements, linking them to the relevant Wikipedia pages about the topics and theorems discussed. In particular we could really benefit from an article about the theory of proportions in Book 5, usually credited to Eudoxus. The main relevant Wikipedia article on this topic (ratio) is in my opinion pretty mediocre.

Etc. Etc. –jacobolus (t) 18:09, 19 September 2023 (UTC)