A Concept Map for Book 1 of Euclid’s Elements

Here’s a fun project I worked on with a very good friend of mine, Justace Clutter. We set out to make a “concept map” for Book 1 of Euclid’s Elements showing how all the propositions, postulates, and axioms are interconnected. I presented this paper on our work at the 2015 conference of the Bridges Organization for Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Education, and Culture in Baltimore, MD. (Justace was unable to attend, unfortunately.) The Bridges 2016 conference will be in Jyväskylä, Finland and I very much hope to go! I haven’t yet selected a good topic but I still have two more months to get my act together. I had so much fun at Bridges 2015 that I strongly encourage anyone with an interest in the intersection of math and art to seriously consider attending Bridges 2016. Maybe I’ll see you there!

A Concept Map for Book 1 of Euclid's Elements

Boxer, A.C. and Clutter, J. “A Concept Map for Book 1 of Euclid’s Elements.” Conference Proceedings of Bridges 2015: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Education, Culture. Baltimore, MD, September, 2015.

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The Little Instauration

Welcome to Curiosities, our brand new blog-within-a-blog! It’s somewhat shocking to consider, but Idols of the Cave has been around for over 4 years now. Curating the site has been a huge joy in my life, and my only regret is that I haven’t been able to produce content as fast as I’d like. It’s certainly not for want of ideas — I have dozens of enthralling new episodes that play to great acclaim in my mind — but making videos has proven rather time-consuming for a plodding sort like myself. Now, as mentioned elsewhere, the original inspiration for the name Idols of the Cave came from Francis Bacon’s reboot of the scientific method which, with his characteristic marketing flare, he branded the Magna Instauratio (“The Great Instauration”). Turning to his shade for inspiration once again, it occurred to me that that’s exactly what this site needs: an instauration!   Maybe not a great one, so to speak, but at least a little one. Consequently, as a key part of my revamp — ahem, instauration — of this site (did you notice our new crocodile ‘favicon’ in the URL bar?), I’m very excited to introduce this new blog page. And having erred on the side of being too slow with my videos, I plan do just the opposite here. My intention is to use Curiosities as place to post shorter thoughts without worrying about double- and triple-checking my references. I’m always juggling quite a few odd side-projects (the odder the better, of course!), even if I see very few of these to anything resembling ‘completion’. So I’m really looking forward to having an outlet to share whatever it is I happen to be working on, and a forum to connect with whomever happens to stumble across this little corner of the internet. And if that someone happens to be you, by all means, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts right back!

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