[lit-ideas] Re: Pons Asinorum
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:02:55 -0700
Karle Trogge wrote
I would be very interested in hearing from Mr Speranza an explication of
this famous proof, which seems to have been left out of my education!
In German, the term ESELSBRÜCKE seems not to share this curious
etymology (which makes no reference whatsoever to a bridge). And the
term 'Pons Asinorum' as I have learned it is applied in Euclidean
geometry at some other point than this proof of the shortness of
straight lines joining points (but as that seems to be strangely lacking
in my education, perhaps this was left out as well). Could Mr Speranza
please show us the sources for this interesting account?
'Pons asinorum,' literally 'bridge of asses' was scholarly cant for the
fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid's Elements. It was so
called because inept students ('dumb asses') had difficulty
understanding its proof, i.e., getting across it. It's been generalized
to mean any intellectual difficulty which separates the inept from the ept.
See: http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/bookI/propI5.html
Robert Paul
Mutton College
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