Can we "seamlessly" divide a polygon?

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: So, Byungchang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909648484827136
author So, Byungchang
author_facet So, Byungchang
contents While the contents of Euclid's Elements are well-known these days, some characters of the original text have been overlooked due to interpretation by modern mathematical languages. The lens of modern mathematics once anachronistically misled researchers of the history of mathematics, and this shows that the classic text itself contains ideas that have not been completely accurately translated. This article concentrates on the division of geometric figures(line, polygon, polyhedron, etc.). In modern analytic geometry, the dissection of geometric figures excludes their boundaries, whereas ancient Greek mathematical texts do not contain such conditions. For a model that fits the latter, this article renovates analytic geometry and suggests alternative definitions of lines, polygons, angles, etc. Roughly speaking, contrary to the coordinate space matching position to point one-to-one, each position in the alternative definition is more complex and can be occupied by more than one figure. The new model turns out to be equivalent to the conventional analytic geometry in a sense. By formulating several statements in Elements with the new model we can discover its advantage over the old model, especially the concordance with a view of the history of mathematics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_11742
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Can we "seamlessly" divide a polygon?
So, Byungchang
History and Overview
01A20, 51N20
While the contents of Euclid's Elements are well-known these days, some characters of the original text have been overlooked due to interpretation by modern mathematical languages. The lens of modern mathematics once anachronistically misled researchers of the history of mathematics, and this shows that the classic text itself contains ideas that have not been completely accurately translated. This article concentrates on the division of geometric figures(line, polygon, polyhedron, etc.). In modern analytic geometry, the dissection of geometric figures excludes their boundaries, whereas ancient Greek mathematical texts do not contain such conditions. For a model that fits the latter, this article renovates analytic geometry and suggests alternative definitions of lines, polygons, angles, etc. Roughly speaking, contrary to the coordinate space matching position to point one-to-one, each position in the alternative definition is more complex and can be occupied by more than one figure. The new model turns out to be equivalent to the conventional analytic geometry in a sense. By formulating several statements in Elements with the new model we can discover its advantage over the old model, especially the concordance with a view of the history of mathematics.
title Can we "seamlessly" divide a polygon?
topic History and Overview
01A20, 51N20
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11742