The Non-euclidean Geometries
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Poincaré, Henri and Halsted, George Bruce
If therefore the possibility of motion is admitted, there can be invented only a finite (and even a rather small) number of three-dimensional geometries.
Riemann's Geometries.—Yet this result seems contradicted by Riemann, for this savant constructs an infinity of different geometries, and that to which his name is ordinarily given is only a particular case.
All depends, he says, on how the length of a curve is defined. Now, there is an infinity of ways of defining this length, and each of them may be the starting point of a new geometry.
That is perfectly true, but most of these definitions are incompatible with the motion of a rigid figure, which in the theorem of Lie is supposed possible. These geometries of Riemann, in many ways so interesting, could never therefore be other than purely analytic and would not lend themselves to demonstrations analogous to those of Euclid.
On the Nature of Axioms.—Most mathematicians regard Lobachevski's geometry only as a mere logical curiosity; some of them, however, have gone farther. Since several geometries are possible, is it certain ours is the true one? Experience no doubt teaches us that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles; but this is because the triangles we deal with are too little; the difference, according to Lobachevski, is proportional to the surface of the triangle; will it not perhaps become sensible when we shall operate on larger triangles or when our measurements shall become more precise? The Euclidean geometry would thus be only a provisional geometry.
To discuss this opinion, we should first ask ourselves what is the nature of the geometric axioms.
Are they synthetic a priori judgments, as Kant said?
They would then impose themselves upon us with such force that we could not conceive the contrary proposition, nor build upon it a theoretic edifice. There would be no non-Euclidean geometry.
To be convinced of it take a veritable synthetic a priori judgment, the following, for instance, of which we have seen the preponderant rôle in the first chapter:
If a theorem is true for the number 1, and if it has been proved that it is true of n + 1 provided it is true of n, it will be true of all the positive whole numbers.
Then try to escape from that and, denying this proposition, try to found a false arithmetic analogous to non-Euclidean geometry—it can not be done; one would even be tempted at first blush to regard these judgments as analytic.
Moreover, resuming our fiction of animals without thickness, we can hardly admit that these beings, if their minds are like ours, would adopt the Euclidean geometry which would be contradicted by all their experience.
Should we therefore conclude that the axioms of geometry are experimental verities? But we do not experiment on ideal straights or circles; it can only be done on material objects. On what then could be based experiments which should serve as foundation for geometry? The answer is easy.
We have seen above that we constantly reason as if the geometric figures behaved like solids. What geometry would borrow from experience would therefore be the properties of these bodies. The properties of light and its rectilinear propagation have also given rise to some of the propositions of geometry, and in particular those of projective geometry, so that from this point of view one would be tempted to say that metric geometry is the study of solids, and projective, that of light.
But a difficulty remains, and it is insurmountable. If geometry were an experimental science, it would not be an exact science, it would be subject to a continual revision. Nay, it would from this very day be convicted of error, since we know that there is no rigorously rigid solid.
The axioms of geometry therefore are neither synthetic a priori judgments nor experimental facts.
They are conventions; our choice among all possible conventions is guided by experimental facts; but it remains free and is limited only by the necessity of avoiding all contradiction. Thus it is that the postulates can remain rigorously true even though the experimental laws which have determined their adoption are only approximative.
In other words, the axioms of geometry (I do not speak of those of arithmetic) are merely disguised definitions.
Then what are we to think of that question: Is the Euclidean geometry true?
It has no meaning.
As well ask whether the metric system is true and the old measures false; whether Cartesian coordinates are true and polar coordinates false. One geometry can not be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.
Now, Euclidean geometry is, and will remain, the most convenient:
1º Because it is the simplest; and it is so not only in consequence of our mental habits, or of I know not what direct intuition that we may have of Euclidean space; it is the simplest in itself, just as a polynomial of the first degree is simpler than one of the second; the formulas of spherical trigonometry are more complicated than those of plane trigonometry, and they would still appear so to an analyst ignorant of their geometric signification.
2º Because it accords sufficiently well with the properties of natural solids, those bodies which our hands and our eyes compare and with which we make our instruments of measure.