Euclid Alone has Looked on Beauty Bare

  

Edna St.Vincent Millay believes Euclid has studied the fundamental elements of beauty. My guess of what it means is that all picture, painting or architecture that are deemed beautiful are made out shapes. As Euclid has studied lines and circles without colours or decorations, Edna considers they are the foundation element of beaty. Moreover, Edna believes not everyone can handle this bare form of beauty. This poem left me lots of questions. Edna is a poet, why would she consider the bare forms of beauty are shapes instead of words? I looked into her connections with artist or mathematician and couldn’t find any. The closest I have got is that she has a friend named Thelma Wood, who is a sculptor. The way she uses literature to express the beauty of Mathematics invites us to think about how do the opposite.

 

Instead of looking at Euclid’s work as the bare form of beauty, I believe many of us who studied Mathematics see it as the foundation of what we know now. His work was the earliest well organized documentary of fundamental geometry. The importance of his work is not only a display of what he found, but how he came to those conclusions (proofs). In a certain way, his work is a dictionary for geometry. As a Math students, Euclid is no strange name. I took a course in my undergrad on Euclidian geometry. All I remember is that I had to memorize many proofs and recite them in exams. The course made me realize the geometry I learnt was just a drop of snowflake on the mountain. However, it also limits my appreciation towards geometry with all those proofs reciting. 

Comments

  1. Amanda FritzlanDecember 19, 2022 at 3:10 PM

    Lovely post! I'm curious in what ways can we express the beauty of literature with mathematics?

    ReplyDelete

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