Russell, a British mathematician and philosopher, "read the beauty like music" from Euclid's Elements of Geometry, and Heickell, a German biologist, "saw the unparalleled beauty of unity in the biological world" from Darwin's Origin of Species. Although scientists' explanations of scientific beauty are mostly scattered, it is not difficult to see that they affirm and attach importance to scientific beauty. In the eyes of these great scientists, the beauty of scientific research is the embodiment of the beauty of natural harmony and the sense of self-transcendence caused by people discovering the secrets of nature.
The Elements of Geometry is a mathematical work created by Euclid, an ancient Greek mathematician. It was written around 300 BC. Geometric elements *** 13, in which: Volume 1 puts forward 23 original concepts such as points, lines, faces, circles and parallel lines, puts forward 5 postulates and 5 axioms, and further studies the congruence conditions of triangles, the relationship between sides and angles of triangles, the theory of parallel lines, and the equal product conditions of triangles and polygons.
Volume two studies the equal product problem of polygons; Volumes 3 and 4 discuss the inscribed polygon and circumscribed polygon of a circle and a circle respectively. The fifth volume discusses the theory of quantity proportion in detail; Volume 6 is the theory of similar polygons; Volumes 7, 8 and 9 are number theory, with *** 100 propositions; The proposition of volume 10 * * 1 15 discusses the addition, subtraction, multiplication and root operations of line segments, names the obtained special line segments, and discusses the relationship between these special line segments; Volume 1 1, volume 12 and volume 13 mainly focus on solid geometry.
The Elements of Geometry summarizes the previous geometric knowledge and research results, and establishes the earliest model of deductive mathematical system by axiomatic method, which marks the transformation of geometric knowledge from scattered and fragmented empirical form to a complete logical system, and has a far-reaching impact on the development of mathematics in later generations. The adopted deductive structure has also promoted the development of these disciplines after being transplanted to other disciplines. However, due to the limitations of the times, there are obvious shortcomings such as omissions and mistakes in proof and insufficient foundation.