Project SherlockEst. Knowledge

Book

1910

Projective Geometry

Oswald Veblen and John Wesley Young

Rebuilds projective geometry from explicit axioms of incidence alone, demonstrating that a geometry can be developed with no notion of distance or angle anywhere in it.

Before you start

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Read these first

Not a difficulty warning — a route. These are in the library too.

ElementsEuclid, 300 BCEDerives the whole of classical geometry from five postulates, and in doing so invents the axiomatic method every later mathematics is written in.

If this is the wrong level

Too hard? Start hereAn Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective GeometryDerrick Norman Lehmer, 1917Builds the projective plane from incidence and cross-ratio alone, with no coordinates, arguing that Desargues's and Pappus's theorems and the principle of duality are more fundamental than any metric structure laid on top of them.

Filed under Geometry in Mathematics.