Euclid's Elements Author: Amazon Prime | Language: English | ISBN:
1888009187 | Format: PDF
Euclid's Elements Description
The classic Heath translation, in a completely new layout with plenty of space and generous margins. An affordable but sturdy sewn hardcover student and teacher edition in one volume, with minimal notes and a new index/glossary.
- Hardcover: 529 pages
- Publisher: Green Lion Press (January 1, 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1888009187
- ISBN-13: 978-1888009187
- Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
There are two kinds of people who will read this review. Those who already know the book and want me to review the edition, and those who don't know the book.
To the first; this is a no-glue sturdy edition - happy to be photocopied - with all of the books bound in one nice portable volume. Despite being reasonably compact, there is ample space on every page for notes, and the diagrams are large and clear. It's really good.
To the second;THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN BY A HUMAN. I'm not kidding and I'm not exaggerating; there is no way to express the joy of reading Euclid without sounding like a lunatic. There are very few books which reach their umpteenth thousandth edition without promising a posthumous infinity of bliss. The bliss of 'The Elements' is admittedly finite, but it delivers right away. This is an electrifying piece of work which has produced a chorus of rapture and inspiration lasting two millennia. Poets have penned homage to its beauty. Philosophers and mathematicians have wept. Theologians saw God in its perfection. As war, pestilence and plague tortured humanity, as the empires of despots rose and crumbled, the devout risked death rather than surrender this book. Why? Because they had read it.
It is a cure for math-phobia, and can be read by anyone who is at least a little studious and over the age of 12.
By Scabby Babbage
This edition of Elements put out by a publisher called Greenlion is superb. The font size, text layout, figures adjacent to propositions, and wide margins make this book very convenient to follow the logic behind each proposition. I used to own the three volume edition put out by Dover but this one beats it by leaps and bounds.
Of course Euclid's Elements, to my mind, ranks as one of the majesterial achievements of the human mind. I follow the format of one proposition a week till I complete the cycle. Then take a respite for a year or two and repeat the exercise.
In 1963 during a train journey from Bangalore to Bombay (via.Poona), India, I was reading Dr. Radhakrishnan's Indian Philosophy. Upon noticing this an elderly gentleman admonished me to stop wasting time and go with something he called "the great Eee-u-clid's ideas". He then gave me one of the best lectures in Western Philosophy that I can remember. Euclid, he said, is far more than geometry. This was my introduction to Euclid other than High School geometry. This gentleman told me that he had written down each propositon and proof from volumes available at the goverment Public Library in Cubbon Park, Bangalore. He was a clerk at the library who had no formal education. Everytime I open the Elements I think of Mr. Gururaj. Such is the beauty and power of Euclid.
By Kersi Von Zerububbel
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