“are the familiar translations and rotations… made in proving the theorems of Euclid.”

—  Howard P. Robertson

Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "are the familiar translations and rotations… made in proving the theorems of Euclid." by Howard P. Robertson?
Howard P. Robertson photo
Howard P. Robertson 28
American mathematician and physicist 1903–1961

Related quotes

Alhazen photo

“He moved to Egypt and supported himself by teaching and by copying Arabic translations of Greek mathematical classics such as Euclid’s Elements and Ptolemy’s Almagest.”

Alhazen (965–1038) Arab physicist, mathematician and astronomer

Abdelhamid I. Sabra, in “Ibn al-Haytham Brief life of an Arab mathematician: died circa 1040 (September-October 2003)”

Samuel Johnson photo

“New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Life of Pope
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo

“We have seen that the law which causes rotation in the single solar masses, is exactly the same which produces the familiar phenomenon of a small whirlpool or dimple in the surface of a stream.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 19
Context: We have seen that the law which causes rotation in the single solar masses, is exactly the same which produces the familiar phenomenon of a small whirlpool or dimple in the surface of a stream. Such dimples are not always single. Upon the face of a river where there are various contending currents, it may often be observed that two or more dimples are formed near each other with more or less regularity. These fantastic eddies, which the musing poet will sometimes watch abstractedly for an hour, little thinking of the law which produces and connects them, are an illustration of the wonders of binary and ternary solar systems.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo

“The art of cultural translation consists in oscillating between distance and nearness, between one’s own concepts and the native ones, or – to put it differently – making the exotic familiar and the familiar exotic.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

“The translator translates a book for the ones who are not familiar with its language of origin. If someone can read it in the language of origin, he will not need to read its translation. So, when you translate, you first suppose that you translate it for someone who does not know its language and could not explore that world and that thought.”

Media Kashigar (1956–2017) Iranian translator, writer and poet

Source: The best critic of a translation is its second translation, Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, 2013 https://www.cgie.org.ir/fa/news/3001

“And thus far historians produce the perfection of this science. But Euclid was not much junior to these, who collected elements, and constructed many of those things which were invented by Eudoxus; and perfected many which were discovered by Theætetus. Besides, he reduced to invincible demonstrations, such things as were exhibited by others with a weaker arm. But he lived in the times of the first Ptolemy: for Archimedes mentions Euclid, in his first book, and also in others. Besides, they relate that Euclid was asked by Ptolomy, whether there was any shorter way to the attainment of geometry than by his elementary institution, and that he answered, there was no other royal path which led to geometry. Euclid, therefore, was junior to the familiars of Plato, but more ancient than Eratosthenes and Archimedes (for these lived at one and the same time, according to the tradition of Eratosthenes) but he was of the Platonic sect, and familiar with its philosophy: and from hence he appointed the constitution of those figures which are called Platonic, as the end of his elementary institutions.”

Proclus (412–485) Greek philosopher

Source: The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 1 (1788), Ch. IV. On the Origin of Geometry, and its Inventors.

Walker Percy photo

“A good rotation. A rotation I define as the experiencing of the new beyond the expectation of the experiencing of the new.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer (1961)

Milton Friedman photo

“The construction of hypotheses is a creative act of inspiration, intuition, invention; its essence is the vision of something new in familiar material. The process must be discussed in psychological, not logical, categories; studied in autobiographies and biographies, not treatises on scientific method; and promoted by maxim and example, not syllogism or theorem.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

"The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953)

Marjane Satrapi photo

“The words are not the same and the feeling is not the same. You know, they say in France that translation is like a woman. She is either beautiful or faithful. So it’s better when she’s beautiful because when she’s too faithful it might be very ugly. This is French people. This translation, though, is very well made. This is my American editor, who knows me very well who has made the translation. But in any translation you lose a little bit.”

Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist

On her views regarding the translation of works in “AN INTERVIEW WITH MARJANE SATRAPI” http://www.bookslut.com/features/2004_10_003261.php in Book Slut (October 2004)

Related topics