Timeline for Uppercase Point Labels in High-School Diagrams: from Euclid?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 30, 2018 at 1:35 | answer | added | Mark S | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jul 16, 2013 at 13:06 | answer | added | Branimir Ćaćić | timeline score: 7 | |
| Jul 16, 2013 at 12:22 | answer | added | user37188 | timeline score: 2 | |
| Apr 6, 2013 at 0:46 | history | edited | Joseph O'Rourke | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
My offer to delete if inappropriate at the time of posting is clearly no longer relevant. While it's been bumped, might as well repair this...
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| Apr 5, 2013 at 19:02 | answer | added | Rodrigo A. Pérez | timeline score: 4 | |
| Apr 5, 2013 at 17:39 | answer | added | user112109 | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jun 20, 2010 at 15:35 | answer | added | Victor Protsak | timeline score: 6 | |
| Jun 20, 2010 at 12:24 | comment | added | Willie Wong | @J. O'Rourke: precisely, my point was that I am not sure whether the "tradition" can be continuously traced back to the Greeks in the time of Euclid. Considering that very few manuscripts of Geometry survived into the medieval times, I find TonyK's interpretation below more likely: that someone somewhere introduced the notation (perhaps for legibility) that majuscule is used for labels. And his manuscript happened to be the lucky one that survived. If I come across any historians, I'll bring up the question. May make a nice PhD problem. | |
| Jun 20, 2010 at 2:48 | comment | added | Joseph O'Rourke | @Matt N.: "...lowercase for small atomic things...": Yes! Exactly my bias. Re: "..., which I suppose is rare at the high school level."--I find this an insightful remark! | |
| Jun 19, 2010 at 22:28 | comment | added | Matt Noonan | Thinking about where I choose lower- vs uppercase letters, I seem to use lowercase for small atomic things (points, functions, group elements) and uppercase for big space-like things (manifolds, spaces of functions, groups, categories). This seems natural as soon as you realize that mathematical objects are Things that can be Considered, which I suppose is rare at the high school level. | |
| Jun 19, 2010 at 21:44 | comment | added | Joseph O'Rourke | @Theo J-F: I am not sure. I see there is a book on this topic, The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A study in cognitive history, by Reviel Netz, but so far I have only been able to access reviews of the book. Chapter 1 is entitled "The lettered diagram," and likely has useful information. | |
| Jun 19, 2010 at 20:41 | comment | added | Theo Johnson-Freyd | I have this impression, I think from Descartes, that the Greeks published very few diagrams. | |
| Jun 19, 2010 at 20:38 | comment | added | Joseph O'Rourke | @W.Wong: I admit I am uncertain (I am unschooled in this area); and those images (thanks for the links!) are not easy to interpret. A conflating factor is that, if the scribe who copied the manuscript was converting a purely majuscule document to one also employing minuscule, he might have substituted for diagram labels as well. Regardless, we know the originals were solely majuscule (because minuscule didn't exist), and later authors (Galileo, Descartes) consistently employed uppercase Latin letters in their diagrams. | |
| Jun 19, 2010 at 19:13 | comment | added | Willie Wong | I am not completely convinced on the Greek connection. The Vatican manuscript (see image 1 at ibiblio.org/expo/vatican.exhibit/exhibit/d-mathematics/… ) has text and diagram labels seemingly both in minuscule, while the copy at Bodlein ( bodley.ox.ac.uk/imacat/img0023.jpg ) seems to have running text in script and diagram labels in majuscule. | |
| Jun 19, 2010 at 18:06 | answer | added | TonyK | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jun 19, 2010 at 16:15 | history | asked | Joseph O'Rourke | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
