Talk:Euclid

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)

It's with astonishment that I discover this refusal to show this link in the list of external links and the arguments given for this. The "unexplained mishmash" is explained in the scientific presentation, and the "mysterious text box (...) which I can make no sense of" has tooltips and is detailed in the documentation.

It's very strange to refuse this reference and then ask for an explanation of "the history of transmission of the text, relationships between the most popular/influential translations and editions". You've just missed the point.

Perhaps reading this text will help you better identify the true Euclid specialists. For my part, I at least know enough not to claim to be one.

I won't comment further. Alain Herreman (talk) 08:46, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@Alain Herreman – I don't mean to give any offense here. I can't tell you how everyone will experience your link; I'm just telling you that I personally (as someone with a significant interest in Euclid's Elements, enough preparation that I can make sense of both the scholarly and computer jargon employed, and a lot of experience navigating various kinds of graphs presented in computer interfaces) found the page to be very difficult to make any use of from both my laptop computer and also my desktop computer with a large display, even after I had tried skimming the documentation (BTW, this is somewhat hidden, nested under the top-level name "Presentations").

The problem I have with the page is not the content, but its presentation (both the intended design and the somewhat glitchy practical implementation). It's plausible to me that an expert with a lot of time and effort can make good use of the graph and the various associated tools, find specific manuscripts they are curious about, trace through their relationships, etc., but I am expecting most naïve readers to click it and be immediately mystified, as I was, click around a few times, then give up and go away. The hundreds of overlapping nodes and lines make for an overwhelming first impression, and the boxes full of various links and buttons are not easy to interpret. The way UI elements slowly fade in and out is mildly infuriating. The way boxes sometimes appear with their content scrolled out of view is confusing. In general having material appear and disappear based on the mouse just moving over the top of the graph is distracting and presents and obstacle to reading the labels hidden underneath.

Have you tried testing your page out on anyone who wasn't involved in its creation? For something intended for a Wikipedia audience, you could try testing on e.g. a few high school or undergraduate students, or if you are mostly focused on scholars, find some scholars who are moderately computer literate and who haven't yet seen your "scientific presentation". Recruit your human testers and then just present that page to them with limited direct explanation/context, and then watch over their shoulder as they try to make sense of it. Ideally try testing the page from smartphone, tablet, laptop, and desktop, using a variety of different web browsers. Designing new user interfaces is very challenging, and in general takes significant usability testing of this type to get right, even for mid–career professionals. Making an effective UI based on a graph is harder than most alternatives, because the main view is less organized. The web is a particularly challenging target because of the wide variety of devices, operating systems, and browsers, and because the browser's basic design is oriented around displaying text documents rather than arbitrary interfaces.

Do you have any other presentations of the same content in an ordinary text–based web page instead of the graph? A version with links embedded in paragraphs of text would probably be best, but some kind of hierarchical outline might also work okay. I'd recommend linking newcomers to a predominantly textual representation first, before dumping them into the graph view. –jacobolus (t) 16:17, 22 October 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)

"I also think we do a poor job summarizing the content of the Elements here" – But there is no "we", it is literally just me (who wrote the entire article), so you are most welcome to add content, but don't expect other editors to appear out of thin air to improve the article, since there was literally no summary of any of the book before I began! Aza24 (talk) 20:14, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

To be clear: none of what I wrote here is intended as a criticism of authors of the page or demand that people do any particular thing. Instead of "poor job" I should have said something like "limited job". My point is just that our article(s) about this topic are pretty thin relative to the amount that has been written about it (2000 years of commentary in several languages, or more recently hundreds of scholarly papers, dozens of books, etc.). It's just an invitation to an apparent expert to contribute some volunteer effort relevant to the subject of their expertise.

Aza24: Are there any aspects of the article(s) that you would like help with? I have been more focused on researching the history of spherical geometry recently, but would be willing to help somewhat here. I'm pretty good at tracking down sources, making nice diagrams, etc., but am not myself any kind of expert on the Elements or Euclid's life. –jacobolus (t) 20:23, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: Given the initial response from jacobolus, I'm marking this as responded-to. Pinchme123 (talk) 03:50, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Note 10 a little misleading

Euclid wrote in Greek, so he did not include the actual Latin words "quod erat demonstrandum" in his works. AnonMoos (talk) 06:53, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 July 2024

Quote: "and the mathematician Serafina Cuomo" In the mentioned resource and in her Wiki page, Serafina is called a historian of mathematics rather than mathematician. I propose to change it to: "the mathematics historian Serafina Cuomo..." Fazel94 (talk) 10:04, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

 Done PianoDan (talk) 17:07, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

I shortened it to just 'historian'; all of the other historians mentioned on this page are also historians of mathematics or historians of science. –jacobolus (t) 18:38, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

The last paragraph has several words capitalized improperly.

The last paragraph has several words with the first letter capitalized in error. Schexnayder (talk) 04:11, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

The last paragraph of the Legacy section? That's the name of a book, so its using title case. Aza24 (talk) 04:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

The earliest reference to Euclid is not in Apollonius but in Archimedes

See Sphere and Cylinder Book 1 proposition 2 Nunarchy (talk) 23:54, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Note, this could be an interpolation but Heiberg thought it was legitimate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nunarchy (talk • contribs) 23:59, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Netz claims: "Step 1 is an interpolation, unbracketed by Heiberg for the bad reason that Proclus had already read a reference of Archimedes to Euclid (Proclus, In Eucl. 68.12) – which shows merely that the interpolation antedated Proclus. From our knowledge of Euclid, the reference should be to I.3, not to I.2, but even so, this reference is only speciously relevant. I.3 shows how to cut off, from a given line, a line equal to some other given line. There is – there can be – no generalization for magnitudes in general, even if by 'magnitudes' geometrical objects alone are meant. Even if Archimedes could commit such a blunder, it remains a fact that such references are the most common scholia. Hence, most likely, this is indeed an interpolation." –jacobolus (t) 03:31, 3 December 2024 (UTC)