{"id":6695,"date":"2025-01-10T10:31:24","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/?p=6695"},"modified":"2025-01-10T10:31:24","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:31:24","slug":"pangloss-teaches-geometry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/2025\/01\/10\/pangloss-teaches-geometry\/","title":{"rendered":"Pangloss Teaches Geometry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We begin, dear boy, by defining a point\u2014<br \/>\n<em>\u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd<\/em>, in Euclid&#8217;s Greek.<br \/>\nZero length and zero width, zero<br \/>\nheight, zero dimension. Zero substance,<br \/>\nmere indication, indistinguishable<br \/>\nfrom nonexistence\u2014yet distinct.<br \/>\nOn this invisible foundation<br \/>\nby surest logic we construct<br \/>\nour world. What is a line but points,<br \/>\na plane but lines? What is a circle<br \/>\nbut a set of points\u2014of zeroes<br \/>\nequidistant from a zero? Thus<br \/>\nfrom nothing we derive perfection.<br \/>\nAll else follows. Segments, angles,<br \/>\npolygons and polyhedra, Pythagoras<br \/>\nand Ptolemy and Plato, the five regular solids,<br \/>\nthe heavenly spheres, sweet music<br \/>\nof the spheres, the earth a sphere revolving<br \/>\nround a sphere. Picture the sun as a basketball&#8230;<br \/>\nYes, spheres and globes and basketballs,<br \/>\nand cylinders, mere circles piled on circles, holding<br \/>\noatmeal, pots and pans and spooned brown<br \/>\nsugar, molasses, island plantations,<br \/>\nslavery and conquest, caravels with triangles for<br \/>\nsails that circumnavigate the globe, triangle<br \/>\ntrade and revolutions, as of spheres, and civil<br \/>\nwar and politics. Elections. Electric<br \/>\nlight and darkness, Zippo lighters, candelabras,<br \/>\nLiberace, Lawrence Welk and Lady Gaga,<br \/>\nLaurie Grossman, making out backstage<br \/>\nin high school, lips like honey-<br \/>\nlemon Halls, and lace-trimmed panties.<br \/>\nMen have fought wars for less\u2014<br \/>\nfor nothing, come to think, which was my<br \/>\npoint. All comes <em>ex nihilo<\/em>.<br \/>\nAll comes to naught. Our sweetest<br \/>\nloves are cruel, and sense made mere excuse<br \/>\nfor madness. Thus senselessness<br \/>\nis made our surest sense! The only firm<br \/>\nfoundation&#8217;s nothing, and the light<br \/>\nof reason emanates from shadows. If<br \/>\nwe stand upon the shoulders of a giant,<br \/>\nwhere does the giant stand? Best not look down.<br \/>\nAny questions? Excellent. Now<br \/>\nonto lesson two: the queue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We begin, dear boy, by defining a point\u2014 \u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd, in Euclid&#8217;s Greek. Zero length and zero width, zero height, zero dimension. Zero substance, mere indication, indistinguishable from nonexistence\u2014yet distinct. On this invisible foundation by surest logic we construct our world. What is a line but points, a plane but lines? What is a circle but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[18],"tags":[605,652,276],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8I1ci-1JZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6695"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6695"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6697,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6695\/revisions\/6697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}