An eye-opening narrative of how geometric principles fundamentally
shaped our world
On a cloudy day in 1413, a balding young man stood at the entrance to
the Cathedral of Florence, facing the ancient Baptistery across the
piazza. As puzzled passers-by looked on, he raised a small painting to
his face, then held a mirror in front of the painting. Few at the time
understood what he was up to; even he barely had an inkling of what was
at stake. But on that day, the master craftsman and engineer Filippo
Brunelleschi would prove that the world and everything within it was
governed by the ancient science of geometry.
In Proof!, the award-winning historian Amir Alexander traces the path
of the geometrical vision of the world as it coursed its way from the
Renaissance to the present, shaping our societies, our politics, and our
ideals. Geometry came to stand for a fixed and unchallengeable universal
order, and kings, empire-builders, and even republican revolutionaries
would rush to cast their rule as the apex of the geometrical universe.
For who could doubt the right of a ruler or the legitimacy of a
government that drew its power from the immutable principles of
Euclidean geometry?
From the elegant terraces of Versailles to the broad avenues of
Washington, DC and on to the boulevards of New Delhi and Manila, the
geometrical vision was carved into the landscape of modernity. Euclid,
Alexander shows, made the world as we know it possible.
