Tuesday, June 20, 2017

GEOMETRY TO THE FORE!

GEOMETRY TO THE FORE!  A universal external reference that may be, that can be, respected, resorted to, researched by all, is to be greatly preferred to its opposite; some occult internal reference that lacks the attributes of the former, a universal external reference which can be proven, then applied, in the arts, crafts, sciences, humanities, mathematics, philosophy, in short the global convivial society of man. These thoughts rive me as I reflect upon the writings of Plotinus, an acclaimed African philosopher of the 3rd century AD, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, who wrote THE ENNEADS (1991), from whose chapter, "Against the Gnostics," I quote: "5. Still more unreasonably: There are men, bound to human bodies and subject to desire, grief, anger, who think so generously of their own faculty that they declare themselves in contact with the Intelligible World, but deny that the sun possesses a similar faculty, less subject to influence, to disorder, to change; they deny that it is any wiser than we, the late born, hindered by so many cheats on the way towards the truth. "Their own soul, the soul of the least of mankind, they declare deathless, divine; but the entire heavens and the stars within the heavens had no communion with the Immortal Soul, though these are far finer and purer grain than themselves--yet they are not blind to the order, the shapely pattern, the discipline prevailing in the heavens , since they are the loudest in complaint of the disorder that troubles our earth. We are to imagine the deathless Soul choosing of design the less worthy place, and preferring to abandon the nobler to the Soul that is to die." P.113. Geometry exhibits the universal external reference characteristics that have been deemed "attributes," above. Geometry has been imputed to Euclid, who also was of Alexandria, Egypt, whom most have claimed to be Greek, by latter-day speculation. Geometry's rigorous accuracy was featured in monuments thousands of years old, in megaliths that were already in existence in Egypt and Nubia before Euclid or Greece were born! I had already developed a solid appreciation for geometry in high school, which was sharpened when I read in "Natural Philosophy," Sir Isaac Newton 's magnum opus, that it, too, was based upon the proofs of EUCLID'S ELEMENTS, no less than Albert Einstein's general and special theories of relativity, had been as well! Very well, then, geometry it is, was, and shall be!