THE FOURTH DIMENSION SIMPLY EXPLAINED

27

being stated. (Hilbert discards proof by superposition, for motion itself needs a geometric foundation, and so cannot be a foundation for geometry.) Another of Euclid's tacit assumptions is that the straight line can be infinitely extended, which, true of Euclidean, is false of some nonEuclidean geometries (e. g. Riemann's).
Page 53

Euclid proves that "if alternate angles are equal, then the lines are parallel," but of the converse propositions, "If alternate angles are unequal, the lines meet." "If the lines are parallel, alternate angles are equal" (either of which implies the other) he could prove neither, and hence assumed the first, his celebrated fifth postulate, without which he could not proceed, as it was needed to prove the early important theorem that the sum of the angles of a triangle is not less than two right angles. This postulate of parallels appeared to later mathematicians neither self-evident nor independent of the other axioms. Considered a flaw, fruitless efforts were made for centuries to prove it. Yet here Euclid is right; this axiom or some equivalent (e. g. two intersecting lines cannot both be parallel to the same line) is necessary to Euclidean geometry. It was from endeavors to improve upon Euclid's theory of parallels that non-Euclidean geometry arose. If the fifth postulate is really involved in Euclid's other assumptions, its denial must lead to contradictions; but about 1830 the Russian Lobachevsky and the Hungarian Bolyai, independently of each other, showed that its denial led to a system of two-dimensional geometry as self-consistent as Euclid's. This new geometry is based on the assumption that through a given point a number of straight lines can be drawn parallel to a given straight line. Euclid's proof that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is not greater than two right angles was still considered perfect until the German mathematician Riemann in 1854 showed that it must involve a fallacy, because no premises were used not as true of spherical as of plane triangles, yet the conclusion is
Page 54 false of spherical triangles. On this basis Riemann further showed that still another self-consistent geometry of two dimensions can be constructed, based on the assumption that through a given point no straight line can be drawn parallel to a given straight line.

Thus we have three self-consistent geometries of two dimensions, inconsistent as a rule, however, with one another. Let P C (Fig. 1) rotate counter-clockwise about P. Three different results are logically possible. When the rotating line ceases to intersect the fixed line on the right, either it will immediately intersect it on the left,

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com