Ring Wraith: What historical advancement/Intellectual achievement is evidence of geometry in ancient greece?
Geometry was in the art of the ancient-greco art, as they attempted to imitate the shapes found in nature.
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Answer by Simple Truth
We cannot give a systematic account of how Greek geometry came into existence and how it was perfected, so we must confine ourselves to describing a few generally agreed highlights. Thales (c. 624-546 BCE) is considered to be the founder of Greek geometry. He was born in Miletus, a town now in modern Turkey (Asia Minor). He was also an astronomer and philosopher. He was held in high regard by the ancient Greeks, and named as one of the seven ‘wise men’ of Greece. He is said to have made a prediction of a solar eclipse which, according to the famous historian Herodotus, occurred during a battle of the Medes and the Lydians. Modern astronomers have dated this eclipse to 28 May, 585 BCE, which serves to give us some idea of the dates of Thales. While it is doubted if someone could have predicted an eclipse so accurately at the given date, the story of its happening assured his fame.
Various stories about Thales have come down to us from historians. One story relates that he travelled to Egypt, where he became acquainted with Egyptian geometry. While the Egyptian approach to geometry was essentially practical, Thales’s work was the start of an abstract investigation of geometry. The following discoveries of elementary geometry are attributed to Thales.
• A circle is bisected by any of its diameters.
• The angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal.
• When two straight lines cut each other, the vertically opposite angles are equal.
• The angle in a semicircle is a right angle.
• Two triangles are equal in all respects if they have two angles and one side respectively equal.
Sadly, many elements of ancient Greek Geometry has been lost through the ages mainly because of wars which resulted in the destructions of scrolls.
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