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Re:Galois Theory by paulddraper on Thursday August 15, 2024 @12:23PM (#41257744)
Elements is formal, right?
Re:Galois Theory by hollerith on Thursday August 15, 2024 @12:32PM (#41257822)
Pretty much. According to someone on Stack Exchange, "The most serious difficulties with Euclid from the modern point of view is that he did not realize that an axiom was needed for congruence of triangles, Euclids proof by superposition is not considered as a valid proof." But making mistakes in a formal treatment of a subject does not negate the fact that it is a formal treatment of the subject IMHO, and AFAICR none of the theorems in Elements is wrong; i.e., Elements is formal enough to have avoided a mistake even though the axioms listed weren't all the axiom that are actually needed to support the theorems.

18th Century European math was much more potent than ancient Greek math, and although parts of it like algebra and geometry were, for a long time, most of it was not understood at a formal or rigorous level for a long time even if we accept the level of rigor found in Elements.

Re:Galois Theory by koolala on Thursday August 15, 2024 @01:41PM (#41258542)
Isn't how formal or rigorous something is just a social convention? Grammer Nazi's used to make online speech be formal with perfect rigor. Isn't it all relative to what your society defines?
Re:Galois Theory by chongli on Thursday August 15, 2024 @02:52PM (#41259207)
No. That's the colloquial definition of formal. In mathematics, the word formal refers to something more specific: one or more statements written using a set of symbols which have fully-defined rules for mechanically transforming them into another form.

A formal proof is then one which proceeds by a series of these mechanical steps beginning with one or more premises and ending with a conclusion (or goal).

Re:Galois Theory by koolala on Thursday August 15, 2024 @04:27PM (#41260018)
Both are a formality based on whats in fashion. I like the Axiom of Choice and not taking Math or words as literal or biblical truth.
Re:Galois Theory by chongli on Thursday August 15, 2024 @04:37PM (#41260109)
If you're a formalist in philosophy of math, then math is neither true nor false, it's merely a bunch of meaningless symbols you transform via mechanical rules.
Re:Galois Theory by nyssos on Thursday August 15, 2024 @04:52PM (#41260244)
To an extent. A truly completely formal proof, as in symbol manipulation according to the rules of some formal system, no. It's valid or it isn't.

But no one actually works like this. There are varying degrees of "semiformality" and what is and isn't acceptable is ultimately a convention, and varies between subfields - but even the laxest mathematicians are still about as careful as the most rigorous physicists.

Re:Galois Theory by gowld on Thursday August 15, 2024 @01:11PM (#41258222)
Elements is mostly formal, but it's also concrete and visual.

Euclid developed arithmetic and algebra through constructive geometry, which relies on our visual intuition to solve problems. Non-concrete problems were totally out of scope. Even curved surfaces (denying the parallel postulate) were byond Euclid. Notably, Elements didn't have imaginary or transcendental numbers. Euclid made no attempt to unify line lengths and arc lengths, and had nothing to say about what fills the gaps between the algebraically (geometrically!) constructible numbers.

Re:Galois Theory by paulddraper on Thursday August 15, 2024 @02:18PM (#41258893)
> Elements didn't have imaginary or transcendental numbers

Elements has pi.*

*It proves the ratio of a circle's area to the square of its diameter is constant.

Re:Galois Theory by gowld on Thursday August 15, 2024 @05:49PM (#41260756)
But doesn't say how large that constant value is.
Re:Galois Theory by Someone on Thursday August 15, 2024 @04:51PM (#41260243)
> Euclid […] had nothing to say about what fills the gaps between the algebraically (geometrically!) constructible numbers

Did he even know those gaps existed? Euclid lived around 300BC. The problem of squaring the circle had been proposed around two centuries before that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaxagoras#Mathematics), but I don’t think people even considered it to be impossible by that time.

Re:Galois Theory by Koshkin on Thursday August 15, 2024 @05:45PM (#41260706)
Incidentally, here's one beautiful edition:

https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/Books/Euclid/Elements.pdf