GEOMETRY IN THE HISTORY

Geometry is one of the oldest sciences. Initially, it constituted a body of practical knowledge in relation to the lengths, areas and volumes. In ancient Egypt it was very developed, according to the texts of Herodotus, Strabo and Diodoro Siculus, Euclid, in the 3rd century BC. He set up geometry in axiomatic form, a treatment that established a norm to follow for many centuries: Euclidean geometry Described in the elements.

Geometry as word has two Greek roots: Geo = earth and Metrón = measure; I mean, it means "earth measurement." Its origin, some three thousand years before Christ, goes back to the Middle East, in particular to ancient Egypt, in which it was necessary to measure agrarian land and in the construction of pyramids and monuments. This geometric conception was accepted without demonstration, it was the product of the practice.

This knowledge passed to the Greeks and it was Thales of Miletus who about 6 centuries before Christ began demonstrative geometry. Demonstrations become fundamental and are the basis of logic as reasoning laws.

Subsequently, Euclid used a deductive reasoning part of unprovable primary basic concepts such as point, line, plane and space, which are the starting point of their definitions, axioms and postulates. It shows theorems and in turn, these will serve to demonstrate other theorems. It creates new knowledge from other existing ones by means of deductive chains of logical reasoning. This geometry, called Euclidean geometry, is based on what is historically known as Euclid's 5th postulate: "By a point outside a straight line you can draw one and only one parallel to it".

Euclidean geometry can be divided into flat geometry and space geometry. The flat studies the figures contained in a plane. The one in the space studies figures that are not contained in the same plane.

There are other geometries that do not accept this Euclidean postulate, but accept other principles that give rise to the so-called "non-Euclidean geometries", such as the one created in the nineteenth century by the Russian Lobatschevsky.