Non-Euclidean geometry


In mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry consists of two geometries based on axioms closely related to those that specify Euclidean geometry. As Euclidean geometry lies at the intersection of metric geometry and affine geometry, non-Euclidean geometry arises by either replacing the parallel postulate with an alternative, or consideration of quadratic forms other than the definite quadratic forms associated with metric geometry. In the former case, one obtains hyperbolic geometry and elliptic geometry, the traditional non-Euclidean geometries. When isotropic quadratic forms are admitted, then there are affine planes associated with the [|planar algebras], which give rise to [|kinematic geometries] that have also been called non-Euclidean geometry.

Principles

The essential difference between the metric geometries is the nature of parallel lines. Euclid's fifth postulate, the parallel postulate, is equivalent to Playfair's postulate, which states that, within a two-dimensional plane, for any given line and a point A, which is not on, there is exactly one line through A that does not intersect. In hyperbolic geometry, by contrast, there are infinitely many lines through A not intersecting, while in elliptic geometry, any line through A intersects.
Another way to describe the differences between these geometries is to consider two straight lines indefinitely extended in a two-dimensional plane that are both perpendicular to a third line :
  • In Euclidean geometry, the lines remain at a constant distance from each other and are known as parallels.
  • In hyperbolic geometry, they diverge from each other, increasing in distance as one moves further from the points of intersection with the common perpendicular; these lines are often called ultraparallels.
  • In elliptic geometry, the lines converge toward each other and intersect.

    History

Background

, named after the Greek mathematician Euclid, includes some of the oldest known mathematics, and geometries that deviated from this were not widely accepted as legitimate until the 19th century.
The debate that eventually led to the discovery of the non-Euclidean geometries began almost as soon as Euclid wrote Elements. In the Elements, Euclid begins with a limited number of assumptions and seeks to prove all the other results in the work. The most notorious of the postulates is often referred to as "Euclid's Fifth Postulate", or simply the parallel postulate, which in Euclid's original formulation is:

If a straight line falls on two straight lines in such a manner that the interior angles on the same side are together less than two right angles, then the straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.

Other mathematicians have devised simpler forms of this property. Regardless of the form of the postulate, however, it consistently appears more complicated than Euclid's other postulates:
  1. To draw a straight line from any point to any point.
  2. To produce a finite straight line continuously in a straight line.
  3. To describe a circle with any centre and distance .
  4. That all right angles are equal to one another.
For at least a thousand years, geometers were troubled by the disparate complexity of the fifth postulate, and believed it could be proved as a theorem from the other four. Many attempted to find a proof by contradiction, including Ibn al-Haytham, Omar Khayyám, Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī, and Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri.
The theorems of Ibn al-Haytham, Khayyam and al-Tusi on quadrilaterals, including the Lambert quadrilateral and Saccheri quadrilateral, were "the first few theorems of the hyperbolic and the elliptic geometries". These theorems along with their alternative postulates, such as Playfair's axiom, played an important role in the later development of non-Euclidean geometry. These early attempts at challenging the fifth postulate had a considerable influence on its development among later European geometers, including Witelo, Levi ben Gerson, Alfonso, John Wallis and Saccheri. All of these early attempts made at trying to formulate non-Euclidean geometry, however, provided flawed proofs of the parallel postulate, depending on assumptions that are now recognized as essentially equivalent to the parallel postulate. These early attempts did, however, provide some early properties of the hyperbolic and elliptic geometries.
Khayyam, for example, tried to derive it from an equivalent postulate he formulated from "the principles of the Philosopher" : "Two convergent straight lines intersect and it is impossible for two convergent straight lines to diverge in the direction in which they converge." Khayyam then considered the three cases right, obtuse, and acute that the summit angles of a Saccheri quadrilateral can take and after proving a number of theorems about them, he correctly refuted the obtuse and acute cases based on his postulate and hence derived the classic postulate of Euclid, which he didn't realize was equivalent to his own postulate. Another example is al-Tusi's son, Sadr al-Din, who wrote a book on the subject in 1298, based on al-Tusi's later thoughts, which presented another hypothesis equivalent to the parallel postulate. "He essentially revised both the Euclidean system of axioms and postulates and the proofs of many propositions from the Elements." His work was published in Rome in 1594 and was studied by European geometers, including Saccheri who criticised this work as well as that of Wallis.
Giordano Vitale, in his book Euclide restituo, used the Saccheri quadrilateral to prove that if three points are equidistant on the base AB and the summit CD, then AB and CD are everywhere equidistant.
In a work titled Euclides ab Omni Naevo Vindicatus, published in 1733, Saccheri quickly discarded elliptic geometry as a possibility and set to work proving a great number of results in hyperbolic geometry.
He finally reached a point where he believed that his results demonstrated the impossibility of hyperbolic geometry. His claim seems to have been based on Euclidean presuppositions, because no logical contradiction was present. In this attempt to prove Euclidean geometry he instead unintentionally discovered a new viable geometry, but did not realize it.
In 1766 Johann Lambert wrote, but did not publish, Theorie der Parallellinien in which he attempted, as Saccheri did, to prove the fifth postulate. He worked with a figure now known as a Lambert quadrilateral, a quadrilateral with three right angles. He quickly eliminated the possibility that the fourth angle is obtuse, as had Saccheri and Khayyam, and then proceeded to prove many theorems under the assumption of an acute angle. Unlike Saccheri, he never felt that he had reached a contradiction with this assumption. He had proved the non-Euclidean result that the sum of the angles in a triangle increases as the area of the triangle decreases, and this led him to speculate on the possibility of a model of the acute case on a sphere of imaginary radius. He did not carry this idea any further.
At this time it was widely believed that the universe worked according to the principles of Euclidean geometry.

Development of non-Euclidean geometry

The beginning of the 19th century would finally witness decisive steps in the creation of non-Euclidean geometry.
Circa 1813, Carl Friedrich Gauss and independently around 1818, the German professor of law Ferdinand Karl Schweikart had the germinal ideas of non-Euclidean geometry worked out, but neither published any results. Schweikart's nephew Franz Taurinus did publish important results of hyperbolic trigonometry in two papers in 1825 and 1826, yet while admitting the internal consistency of hyperbolic geometry, he still believed in the special role of Euclidean geometry.
Then, in 1829–1830 the Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky and in 1832 the Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai separately and independently published treatises on hyperbolic geometry. Consequently, hyperbolic geometry is called Lobachevskian or Bolyai-Lobachevskian geometry, as both mathematicians, independent of each other, are the basic authors of non-Euclidean geometry. Gauss mentioned to Bolyai's father, when shown the younger Bolyai's work, that he had developed such a geometry several years before, though he did not publish. While Lobachevsky created a non-Euclidean geometry by negating the parallel postulate, Bolyai worked out a geometry where both the Euclidean and the hyperbolic geometry are possible depending on a parameter k. Bolyai ends his work by mentioning that it is not possible to decide through mathematical reasoning alone if the geometry of the physical universe is Euclidean or non-Euclidean; this is a task for the physical sciences.
Bernhard Riemann, in a famous lecture in 1854, founded the field of Riemannian geometry, discussing in particular the ideas now called manifolds, Riemannian metric, and curvature.
He constructed an infinite family of non-Euclidean geometries by giving a formula for a family of Riemannian metrics on the unit ball in Euclidean space. The simplest of these is called elliptic geometry and it is considered a non-Euclidean geometry due to its lack of parallel lines.
By formulating the geometry in terms of a curvature tensor, Riemann allowed non-Euclidean geometry to apply to higher dimensions. Beltrami was the first to apply Riemann's geometry to spaces of negative curvature.

Terminology

It was Gauss who coined the term "non-Euclidean geometry". He was referring to his own work, which today we call hyperbolic geometry or Lobachevskian geometry. Several modern authors still use the generic term non-Euclidean geometry to mean hyperbolic geometry.
Arthur Cayley noted that distance between points inside a conic could be defined in terms of logarithm and the projective cross-ratio function. The method has become called the Cayley–Klein metric because Felix Klein exploited it to describe the non-Euclidean geometries in articles in 1871 and 1873 and later in book form. The Cayley–Klein metrics provided working models of hyperbolic and elliptic metric geometries, as well as Euclidean geometry.
Klein is responsible for the terms "hyperbolic" and "elliptic". His influence has led to the current usage of the term "non-Euclidean geometry" to mean either "hyperbolic" or "elliptic" geometry.
There are some mathematicians who would extend the list of geometries that should be called "non-Euclidean" in various ways.
There are many kinds of geometry that are quite different from Euclidean geometry but are also not necessarily included in the conventional meaning of "non-Euclidean geometry", such as more general instances of Riemannian geometry.