Talk:Euclid and His Modern Rivals

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CORRECTION: The final sentence of the first paragraph is wrong and should be dropped. The idea that Dodgson was somehow against non-Euclidean geometry is based on a common misconception. The book has nothing at all to do with non-Euclidean geometry. The modern rivals were the writers of textbooks in use at that time and (according to Dodgson, who might well have been correct) inferior to Euclid. His idea was that Euclid's original text should be used in the schools. H.S.M. Coxeter, who wrote the preface to the Dover edition, referred to that misconception, adding that there is no evidence that Dodgson had even heard of non-Euclidean geometry. --unsigned comment by IP 142.3.219.69 20:50, 22 February 2006

Deletion

I think that this article should be nominated for deletion because Euclid and His Modern Rivals is at best only of historic interest. Prb4 18:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly oppose, especially since you have given no reason for deletion. Historical interest is as good as many other interests, and better than most. The article does need work, though. -- Doctormatt 00:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Has User:Prb4 read the book? Yes or no. If not, User:Prb4 has no business expressing an opinion about it.Lestrade 01:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)Lestrade[reply]

Two years later I ask, "Have you finished reading the book yet?".Lestrade (talk) 18:49, 14 January 2009 (UTC)Lestrade[reply]

Niemand and Riemann

Just wondering, having stumbled upon this article: am I quite unjustified in suspecting that the name of "Professor Niemand" is in part a play on Bernhard Riemann's name? Riemann, after all, was the founder of Riemannian geometry, and what's more, he states in his seminal "On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry", in the introductory passage, that the Elements of Euclid are not, in fact, the proper elements of geometry, and that at the foundations of geometry there are things which Euclid simply takes for granted and does not examine at all. This would not be to suggest that Carroll was somehow opposed to Riemann but rather that, whatever his acquaintance with non-Euclidean geometry, he might have had some notion that there was a professor Riemann saying such things and thought the pun apposite.--Rallette (talk) 09:51, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]