Abstract
Difficulties with Euclid’s fifth postulate were hinted at in The Elements and cited explicitly by the earliest commentators. Though it took roughly two thousand years to resolve the problem of the parallels , the result of that process was a sea change in both mathematics and physics. While it was the subject of a struggle, the problem of the parallels seemed an intractable monster, devouring egos, relationships, and careers, threatening to destabilize mathematics itself. Yet in retrospect, the struggle was so fruitful and its resolution so startling that the problem itself seems a gift.
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Dillon, M.I. (2018). Neutral Geometry . In: Geometry Through History. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74135-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74135-2_2
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