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The writer is considering the subject as a physicist might. Euclid’s figures are ideal objects, they don’t have errors. It’s assumed that your construction is a
by nyc111 3y ago
The writer is considering the subject as a physicist might. Euclid’s figures are ideal objects, they don’t have errors. It’s assumed that your construction is an approximation. Euclid might have drawn his figures on sand with lots of “errors”, still the figures are idealized no matter how you draw them. For instance, Euclid represents numbers as lines. There are not units and no errors. His proofs are still valid if I don’t draw his lines exactly as he drew them (I’m talking about Book IX where there are propositins about numbers).
- wolfram74 3y agoThe precision in the physical construction of the proof though does help in assessing it's validity. If the insight was completely divorced from the visual representation then you may as well be doing straight up symbolic algebra.