Hey /sci/, /lit/ here, I was curious as to completing the entirety

>>8576036
Do you know just how stupid this question is, /lit/?

>>8576036

This board will wrongly shit on you for wanting to read Euclid, OP (see this >>8576050 faggot), but it's generally a good idea if you can be serious about it and hunker down for an extended period. It's especially a good idea since the Elements is one of the few ancient texts which remains /uncontroversially/ true among people who have actually read and understand it. This isn't some political theory which is a function of what the individual or culture values.

It would be especially good for you if you're not great at math and logic yet sincerely want to learn how the process and related arguments actually work. You can actually get that out of Euclid.

The nitpicking about Euclid here is just that. There is this weird tendency in the sciences to want to be ahistorical, and it's especially the younger people (read: this board's core userbase) who refuse on some level to understand why it is important to understand the history of science.

>>8576068
Whoa, anon, you just stomped me out like a small, insignificant cinder.

File: Screenshot_2017-01-01-21-17-31-1.png (2MB, 1183x856px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 1183x856px

Tbh is just a bunch of old ass conjectures and proofs of mostly basic geometry. There's really no point to have that book except as a nice bookshelf decoration for your study like i do.

It's tedious without previous knowledge of geometry. Review the basics, read about proofs and you are set to go. It's good to jave some paper, straight edge and compas to do the proof yourself. Don't know what else you want to know though.

>>8576068
Very informative, thank you. I figured it could be a fun thing to do to boost logic and see how influential the work was. Any idea on an edition to get?

>>8576081
Not the anon you're replying to but:

Get these three volumes if you want very detailed annotations on absolutely everything in the books.
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Books-Elements-Vol-1-2/dp/0486600882

Otherwise, if you want something simpler then this edition is just fine.
https://www.amazon.com/Euclids-Elements-Euclid/dp/1888009195/

>>8576081

I am the anon with the the above long post. I agree with this other anon >>8576143 that the three Dover volumes are the way to go. They are "holdable", have plenty of historical annotation (too much frankly, feel free to skip the bits you're not interested in), are cheap, and readable once you get into the body of the text.

Checking the other link, it's really just again "Heath" with some tweaks. About a century ago, one Brit by the name of Heath executed a standard English-language translation and historical exegesis, which is really the basis of any English-language version of the Elements that you are likely to find. In that sense, asking "which version" is a bit pointless unless you're prepared to read an ancient mathematical text in another language, which is asking a bit much of most humans.

Just get the Dover version of this "Heath", anon. IIRC B&N publishes their own omnibus of exactly the same thing, but the book is fatter and more unwieldy. You are going to want to actually draw things while leafing through the book(s). If you're not engaging with the text by doing your own drawings, then you are doing it wrong.

>>8576036
>I was curious as to completing the entirety of Euclid's Elements

Why the entirety? Abraham Lincoln only read the first 6 books (the ones on plane geometry)
http://the-american-catholic.com/2012/08/16/lincoln-and-euclid/

>>8576196

This is great.

>>8576036
Read it for culture. It was one of the first attempts to put geometry, one of the biggest and most physically rooted fields of math, on a rigorous foundation. Obviously it had a huge impact on the progress of mathematics from there. But don't be fooled into thinking that it'd be useful for learning math. Back then, sure, where else would you learn it? But there's been a ton of growth in math since then. Whole fields were created and refined eventually leading the pillars of modern math: algebra, analysis, topology. Which are applied to problems and situations that appeal concretely, namely geometry and number theory. Sometimes they even merge together like in the algebraic geometry formulated by Grothendieck not even a century ago. Lastly I don't think many mathematicians have read it. I haven't, I enjoy reading old analysis or number theory for culture instead. It's possible that more philosophers or non academics have read it than mathematicians.

>>8576081
I read it in the 9th grade and it helped me hugely in terms of logic. It's not a great resource for learning math, however

>>8576036
Read Coxeter instead

I think that this sort of post actually belongs more on /lit/ than on /sci/. Seriously, there's a reason St. John's has Euclid's Elements in their curriculum but MIT doesn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_(Annapolis/Santa_Fe)#Freshman_year

>>8577789

still, it's a reasonable and on-board-topic thread, with a general good will of cross posting, and the posts in the thread have also been on topic. that's why it hasn't been deleted.

>>8576076

If you're buying a paperback B&N omnibus for no other reason than that you believe that it is a "nice decoration", then you are doing it wrong. Basically you're a pleb both ways: you buy a shit B&N edition and think it " a decoration", and at the same time openly admit not reading it, nor even having any aspiration to read it. You would be much better off if you had said that you buy B&N copies for the value and /with the intent and follow-through of actually reading them/. All that other other stuff on your shelf "looks" better, if we judge a book by its spine.

>>8576036
No, because we have better things to do with our time than posturing and author-fetishism

>>8578123

No you don't, and you know it.

>>8577789
>reading all those book in a year

I smell bullshit

Thanks guys. Bought the annotated ones. Looking forward to it. Do you guys know what the next big mathematical logic work after the Elements?

thanks cuties ~