26 April

Geometry means ‘measurement of the Earth, or land’. Geo-metry. We learn it (badly) as ‘maths’. The original meaning gets lost. Ancient inventors of geometry would measure a piece of land to have a way to say ‘this piece is yours’. Geometry was designed as a way to reach agreement on shared things. If you look at how geometry reaches that agreement, by creating and combining shared, agreed axioms, you have a model for how to reach agreement on anything. The Greeks extended the model into rhetoric, the art of argument, one of the cornerstones of their education system. Today rhetoric only really survives in legal procedure. I vote for bringing back rhetoric.