Customer Reviews

Euclid's Elements

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

Euclid's Elements: all thirteen books complete in one volume. The Thomas L. Heath Translation. Dana Densmore, Editor. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Green Lion Press, 2002. Cloth, 529 pp. ISBN 1888009187.

I have just received my hardcover copy of 'Euclid's Elements' and must say that Green Lion Press is to be congratulated on having given us, not only an accurate and uncluttered student-friendly edition of Euclid, but a book that in terms of its physical makeup is truly splendid.

What a striking contrast this Green Lion Press book is to the over-priced trash so many publishers see fit to inflict on us today. Rather than the sort of pseudo-book we have grown accustomed to - books on paper of mediocre quality in imitation cloth-covered boards; books with those wretched thermoplastic spines that either won't open flat or if opened will immediately crack; books designed to self-destruct after only minimal use - Green Lion Press has given us something very different.

Their hardcover edition is cased in sturdy real cloth-covered boards. Its pages are Smyth-sewn in the traditional manner so that the book will open flat. It is beautifully printed on durable high-quality paper and the typography and layout are also excellent.

Green Lion Press has, in short, given us A REAL BOOK at a reasonable price, one that will easily withstand the heavy use most readers will be giving it, and one that is a truly fitting vehicle for this masterpiece of Greek wisdom.

There are a few books one would like to give six stars, and above all of them there is this ten star book. As everyting has been said about The Elements, I would review this particular edition rather than The Elements itself.

First of all, this is a one single volume (be aware of Dover's 10$ book, it is only one thrid of the whole). This is usefull, of course, but to me it adquires an extra relevance in this particular item. The Elements may be the best math book ever (including Newton's Principia), so I just didn't want a book, but a beautifull book. This is the only time I chose the hardcover edition, and I think I did right. The book is printed in high quality paper, and the typeface is also beautifull.

As someone has already said, when you are reading through a proposition, and you turn the page, you find the diagram repeated, so that you don't have to be continually back and forth. In this book, where every propositions includes a diagram, this is not a minor advantage.

The final pro is that it is not interspersed with Heath's notes. "Euclid Alone has looked on beauty bare", so you better take this edition rather than the Dover's one. The book can be followed from the first proposition til the very last one, so no coments should be interspersed. Any critical notes about the propositions should be either at the end of each of Euclid's books, or if they are very extense, as Heath's ones, in a separated volume. To understanding The Elements, this edition prefaces suffice (and I even think that some parts are unnecesary, sometimes becoming redundant).

Green Lion Press has done a good job in providing us this beautifull one-volume edition.

This edition of Euclid's Elements is a very commonly used one at Thomas Aquinas College in California, a school where the Elements is a required course. Students begin study of the Elements in the freshman year and continue to explore its meaning in later Mathematics and Philosophy.

This ancient work is a masterpiece of the human mind and a marvelous example of how a science may be built off of proper beginning principles. This edition presents an excellent translation of that work in a quality binding.

One of the most important features of this edition of Euclid is the fact that the diagrams are reprinted on additional pages so that one may see them as he studies the texts of the various propositions. There is no need to constantly flip back and forth to look at diagrams (an important part of following the flow of the argument in the proposition for most students). Most other printings of the Elements (at least the ones that I have seen), lack this very helpful feature. The pages are also large enough to add some notes while working through the props.

Quite simply, this is a nice edition of one of the greatest masterpieces of the human mind. No lover of Geometry, of Mathematics, or of truth in general, should be without this or some other faithful translation of this foundational text.

No doubt this is a precious edition, but the recent one by Richard Fitzpatrick in Greek and English is really astounding (and affordable), especially the version in 4 volumes, where a full page (and more than one if needed) is generously given to each proposition.

OTH I find the classical Heath/Dover edition an essential reference, precisely for the illuminating Heath's interspersed commentary. In fact Heath's "A History of Greek Mathematics" and the shorter "A Manual of Greek Mathematics" are just as essential to a better understanding of Euclid, and of course Greek Mathematics.

As a complementary/companion reading I would heartily recommend Benno Artmann's excellent "Euclid - The Creation of Mathematics", priceless, if only, for its bibliography.

An indispensable and brilliant mathematical "guided reading" based on the development of Greek Mathematics, fundamental for an overall understanding of the Elements, is B. L. van der Waerden's "Science Awakening" (1954, out of print, but still possible to find).

A philological approach, incredibly rich in its revelations about the Elements and early Greek Mathematics in general is Arpad Szabo's "The Beginnings of Greek Mathematics" (very expensive!, but worth every penny).

An then there's David Fowler's "The Mathematics of Plato's Academy", an up-to-date comprehensive account on Greek Mathematics of the time, and Euclid of course.

Just a final, more general comment. Through its many layers Euclid's Elements is a key to the better understanding of our deepest roots. I myself discovered it late in my life and cannot believe what I missed. I now understand that the fundamentals of Ancient Greece - and consequently ours - cannot be fully grasped without this book. It would be no exaggeration to affirm that Plato and Aristotle are not fully intelligible without Euclid and that, in general, without knowledge of the Elements Ancient Greece would be just a "shadow of the past", devoid of the sparkling light cast by its mathematics and science.

I have spent this year reading the Greek or Italian classics that many are familiar with including Homers Iliad/Odes, Ptolemy-Almagest, Plato-Complete Works, Aristole's Complete Works, Dante's Divine Comedy etc. What some may refer to as the thought provoking/teaching masterpieces of all time. In comparisons to these and several other classics I have found Euclids "Elements" and Newtons "Principia" the two most influential for the the last two milleniums. Why? Both for different reasons. But Euclids work is divine for its utter simplicity and development from the simple fundamentals carefully building and choosing the geometric topics to the more accomplished and advanced geometric Scholiums. With due dilligence and perserverance the three dimensionality of the world will become readily apparent to the student in its true grace. I cannot believe that I indulged myself in four semesters of calculus without reading the "Elements". I recommend reading this edition in conjunction with another unrelated work. Give yourself time to understand and slowly digest its presentation. Abraham Lincoln in "Team of Rivals" is quoted as having spent many days studying Euclids Elements and working out the numerous proofs. He confided to his cabinet that working out the proofs were a great mental exercise that he pursued with great vigor in the late night. He found their elucidation to clearly improve his prospectives on his administrations policys and their potential outcomes. Lincoln only had access to books 1-6.

I can't give this book enough praise to do it justice. In addition to being well designed and printed, this presentation of Euclid's class is elegant in it's directness and simplicity. I don't think there is a single wasted word in this book.

If you want a clear explanation of Euclid's Elements, there is not doubt that this is the version you're looking for.

Q.E.D.

This is a nice edition of Thomas L. Heath's translation of Euclid's ELEMENTS. Those who rely on this edition alone will miss the considerable insights that they could get from looking at the Dover reprint of Heath's Euclid, available in three volumes.

If you think you have no need for Heath's exposition, ask yourself what Postulate Four, "All right angles are equal," means. Perhaps it says that all 90 degree angles are equal, but that would seem to be true by definition. The nub of this assertion is the invariance of figures, as Heath points out in his notes on Euclid and in his MANUAL OF GREEK MATHEMATICS. The invariance of figures is perhaps the deepest and most important idea underlying Euclidean (and nonEuclidean) geometry. It would be a pity for you to miss it.

The Dover books are intimidating, but you are looking at a subject that has developed over thousands of years. This Green Lion edition is a step backward, not forward. There is no royal road to geometry. Wonderful as Euclid is, you will have to work to understand him. Ignoring the commentaries of the past is not the way forward.

Nice book for your shelf.

I have attempted the elements before but found myself caught in the voluminous commentary by its translator, Heath. This edition pares all that down into a crisp, readable text. The editors should be commended for their excellent decisions regarding typeface, reproducing the illustrations to coincide with the proofs and an overall wonderful exposition of Euclid's work. If you want to actually read Euclid as opposed to Heath, this is the book for you.