Geometry

Geometry (Greek Γεωμετρια, geo = earth, metria = measure) arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. It was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers. In modern times, geometric concepts have been generalized to a high level of abstraction and complexity, and have been subjected to the methods of calculus and abstract algebra, so that many modern branches of the field are barely recognizable as the descendants of early geometry. (See areas of mathematics and algebraic geometry.)

The Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation

The Islamic ascendency in the Middle East, north Africa, and Spain began about 640 A.D. The great library of Alexandria was burned. Original Arab mathematics during this period was primarily algebraic rather than geometric, though there were important commentaries on geometry. Omar Khayyám, for example, was a geometer as well as a poet. Scholarship in Europe declined until even the great works of antiquity were lost to them, and survived only in the Islamic centers of learning.

Related Topics:
Library of Alexandria - Omar Khayyám

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When Europe started to emerge from the intellectual darkness of the Middle Ages, the writers of Ancient Greece and Rome were rediscovered in Islamic libraries and translated from Arabic into Latin. Euclid?s Elements of Geometry was recovered, and the rigorous deductive methods of geometry were relearned. Development of geometry in the style of Euclid resumed, resulting in an abundance of new theorems and concepts, many of them very profound and elegant.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~