[lit-ideas] Re: Pons Asinorum
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:39:58 EDT
In a message dated 6/10/2009 3:03:33 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
'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
----
And then there's Proclus citing this Epicurean laughing at Euclides.
Oddly, Clark, in the site referred to by Mutton college prof, writes:
>This proposition has been called the Pons Asinorum, or Asses' Bridge.
>Whether this name is due to its difficulty (which it isn't)
I wonder if Karle Trogge's "Witters" would say that _that_ is a sentence?!
Not to me. I cannot understand the _logical form_ behdn
It is not clear whether the name is
due to its difficulty -- which it isn't.
It isn't what? I hope she doesn'e mean 'difficult' because then she is,
friendly, an ass.
>or the resemblance of its figure to a bridge is not clear. Very few of
the propositions in the >Elements are known by names.
That's not so true. My mother calls the first, "Maria", the second, "Maria
Maria", and the third, "Maria Maria Maria" -- We love to sing, "We just
meant a girl named Maria", meaning the first proposition.
The fourth proposition we call Juan.
Cheers,
JL Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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