Log24

Thursday, August 11, 2016

The Large Desargues Configuration

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 10:30 pm

(Continued from April 2013 and later)

This is what I called "the large Desargues configuration
in posts of April 2013 and later.

Friday, April 19, 2013

The Large Desargues Configuration

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:25 am

Desargues' theorem according to a standard textbook:

"If two triangles are perspective from a point
they are perspective from a line."

The converse, from the same book:

"If two triangles are perspective from a line
they are perspective from a point."

Desargues' theorem according to Wikipedia
combines the above statements:

"Two triangles are in perspective axially  [i.e., from a line]
if and only if they are in perspective centrally  [i.e., from a point]."

A figure often used to illustrate the theorem,
the Desargues configuration , has 10 points and 10 lines,
with 3 points on each line and 3 lines on each point.

A discussion of the "if and only if" version of the theorem
in light of Galois geometry requires a larger configuration—
15 points and 20 lines, with 3 points on each line
and 4 lines on each point.

This large  Desargues configuration involves a third triangle,
needed for the proof   (though not the statement ) of the
"if and only if" version of the theorem. Labeled simply
"Desargues' Theorem," the large  configuration is the
frontispiece to Volume I (Foundations)  of Baker's 6-volume
Principles of Geometry .

Point-line incidence in this larger configuration is,
as noted in a post of April 1, 2013, described concisely
by 20 Rosenhain tetrads  (defined in 1905 by
R. W. H. T. Hudson in Kummer's Quartic Surface ).

The third triangle, within the larger configuration,
is pictured below.

IMAGE- The proof of the converse of Desargues' theorem involves a third triangle.

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Space Trace

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:08 pm

The title "Space Trace" was suggested yesterday by Claude.ai.

How classical space leaves a Galois trace:

IMAGE- The large Desargues configuration and Desargues's theorem in light of Galois geometry

 

Monday, April 10, 2023

Space

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 3:09 am

(Perspective Not  as Symbolic Form)

From a post of June 8, 2014

Some background on the large Desargues configuration

See August 6, 2013 — Desargues via Galois.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

As Well

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:45 pm

For some backstory, see
http://m759.net/wordpress/?s=”I+Ching”+48+well .

See as well elegantly packaged” in this journal.

“Well” in written Chinese is the hashtag symbol,
i.e., the framework of a 3×3 array.

My own favorite 3×3 array is the ABC subsquare
at lower right in the figure below —

'Desargues via Rosenhain'- April 1, 2013- The large Desargues configuration mapped canonically to the 4x4 square

 

Sunday, June 16, 2019

Master Plan from Outer Space

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

IMAGE- The large Desargues configuration and Desargues's theorem in light of Galois geometry

Friday, September 29, 2017

Principles Before Personalities*

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

(Some Remarks for Science Addicts)

Principles —

IMAGE- The large Desargues configuration in light of Galois geometry

Personalities —

* See "Tradition Twelve."

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

A Date at the Death Cafe

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:48 pm

The New York TImes  reports this evening that
"Jon Underwood, Founder of Death Cafe Movement,"
died suddenly at 44 on June 27. 

This  journal on that date linked to a post titled "The Mystic Hexastigm."

A related remark on the complete 6-point   from Sunday, April 28, 2013

(See, in Veblen and Young's 1910 Vol. I, exercise 11,
page 53: "A plane section of a 6-point in space can  
be considered as 3 triangles perspective in pairs
from 3 collinear points with corresponding sides
meeting in 3 collinear points." This is the large  
Desargues configuration. See Classical Geometry
in Light of Galois Geometry
.)

This  post was suggested, in part, by the philosophical ruminations
of Rosalind Krauss in her 2011 book Under Blue Cup . See 
Sunday's post  Perspective and Its Transections . (Any resemblance
to Freud's title Civilization and Its Discontents  is purely coincidental.)

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Expanding the Spielraum

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:48 am

Cézanne's Greetings.

"Cézanne ignores the laws of classical perspective . . . ."

— Voorhies, James. “Paul Cézanne (1839–1906).”
In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History .  New York:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. (October 2004)

Some others do not.

This is what I called "the large Desargues configuration
in posts of April 2013 and later.

Monday, December 19, 2016

Tetrahedral Cayley-Salmon Model

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:38 am

The figure below is one approach to the exercise
posted here on December 10, 2016.

Tetrahedral model (minus six lines) of the large Desargues configuration

Some background from earlier posts —


IMAGE- Geometry of the Six-Set, Steven H. Cullinane, April 23, 2013

Click the image below to enlarge it.

Polster's tetrahedral model of the small Desargues configuration

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Complexity to Simplicity via Hudson and Rosenhain*

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 1:20 am

'Desargues via Rosenhain'- April 1, 2013- The large Desargues configuration mapped canonically to the 4x4 square

*The Hudson of the title is the author of Kummer's Quartic Surface  (1905).
The Rosenhain of the title is the author for whom Hudson's 4×4 diagrams
of "Rosenhain tetrads" are named. For the "complexity to simplicity" of
the title, see Roger Fry in the previous post.

Saturday, December 10, 2016

Folk Etymology

Images from Burkard Polster's Geometrical Picture Book

See as well in this journal the large  Desargues configuration, with
15 points and 20 lines instead of 10 points and 10 lines as above.

Exercise:  Can the large Desargues configuration be formed
by adding 5 points and 10 lines to the above Polster model
of the small configuration in such a way as to preserve
the small-configuration model's striking symmetry?  
(Note: The related figure below from May 21, 2014, is not
necessarily very helpful. Try the Wolfram Demonstrations
model
, which requires a free player download.)

Labeling the Tetrahedral Model (Click to enlarge) —

Related folk etymology (see point a  above) —

Related literature —

The concept  of "fire in the center" at The New Yorker , 
issue dated December 12, 2016, on pages 38-39 in the
poem by Marsha de la O titled "A Natural History of Light."

Cézanne's Greetings.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Core Statements

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 1:06 pm

"That in which space itself is contained" — Wallace Stevens

An image by Steven H. Cullinane from April 1, 2013:

The large Desargues configuration of Euclidean 3-space can be 
mapped canonically to the 4×4 square of Galois geometry —

'Desargues via Rosenhain'- April 1, 2013- The large Desargues configuration mapped canonically to the 4x4 square

On an Auckland University of Technology thesis by Kate Cullinane —
On Kate Cullinane's book 'Sample Copy' - 'The core statement of this work...'
The thesis reportedly won an Art Directors Club award on April 5, 2013.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Pascal’s Finite Geometry

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:01 am

See a search for "large Desargues configuration" in this journal.

The 6 Jan. 2015 preprint "Danzer's Configuration Revisited," 
by Boben, Gévay, and Pisanski, places this configuration,
which they call the Cayley-Salmon configuration , in the 
interesting context of Pascal's Hexagrammum Mysticum .

They show how the Cayley-Salmon configuration is, in a sense,
dual to something they call the Steiner-Plücker configuration .

This duality appears implicitly in my note of April 26, 1986,
"Picturing the smallest projective 3-space." The six-sets at
the bottom of that note, together with Figures 3 and 4
of Boben et. al. , indicate how this works.

The duality was, as they note, previously described in 1898.

Related material on six-set geometry from the classical literature—

Baker, H. F., "Note II: On the Hexagrammum Mysticum  of Pascal,"
in Principles of Geometry , Vol. II, Camb. U. Press, 1930, pp. 219-236  

Richmond, H. W., "The Figure Formed from Six Points in Space of Four Dimensions,"
Mathematische Annalen  (1900), Volume 53, Issue 1-2, pp 161-176

Richmond, H. W., "On the Figure of Six Points in Space of Four Dimensions," 
Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics , Vol. 31 (1900), pp. 125-160

Related material on six-set geometry from a more recent source —

Cullinane, Steven H., "Classical Geometry in Light of Galois Geometry," webpage

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Purely Aesthetic

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:00 am

G. H. Hardy in A Mathematician's Apology —

What ‘purely aesthetic’ qualities can we distinguish in such theorems as Euclid’s or Pythagoras’s?

I will not risk more than a few disjointed remarks. In both theorems (and in the theorems, of course, I include the proofs) there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy. The arguments take so odd and surprising a form; the weapons used seem so childishly simple when compared with the far-reaching results; but there is no escape from the conclusions. There are no complications of detail—one line of attack is enough in each case; and this is true too of the proofs of many much more difficult theorems, the full appreciation of which demands quite a high degree of technical proficiency. We do not want many ‘variations’ in the proof of a mathematical theorem: ‘enumeration of cases’, indeed, is one of the duller forms of mathematical argument. A mathematical proof should resemble a simple and clear-cut constellation, not a scattered cluster in the Milky Way. 

Related material:

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Preoccupied

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120108-CardinalPreoccupied.jpg

"The Cardinal seemed a little preoccupied today."

See also a post found via a search in
this journal for "April 19 ".

Ageometretos medeis eisito .

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Sunday School

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:29 am

Paradigms of Geometry:
Continuous and Discrete

The discovery of the incommensurability of a square’s
side with its diagonal contrasted a well-known discrete 
length (the side) with a new continuous  length (the diagonal).
The figures below illustrate a shift in the other direction.
The essential structure of the continuous  configuration at
left is embodied in the discrete  unit cells of the square at right.

IMAGE- Concepts of Space: The Large Desargues Configuration, the Related 4x4 Square, and the 4x4x4 Cube

See Desargues via Galois (August 6, 2013).

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Vide

Some background on the large Desargues configuration

"The relevance of a geometric theorem is determined by what the theorem
tells us about space, and not by the eventual difficulty of the proof."

— Gian-Carlo Rota discussing the theorem of Desargues

What space  tells us about the theorem :  

In the simplest case of a projective space  (as opposed to a plane ),
there are 15 points and 35 lines: 15 Göpel  lines and 20 Rosenhain  lines.*
The theorem of Desargues in this simplest case is essentially a symmetry
within the set of 20 Rosenhain lines. The symmetry, a reflection
about the main diagonal in the square model of this space, interchanges
10 horizontally oriented (row-based) lines with 10 corresponding
vertically oriented (column-based) lines.

Vide  Classical Geometry in Light of Galois Geometry.

* Update of June 9: For a more traditional nomenclature, see (for instance)
R. Shaw, 1995.  The "simplest case" link above was added to point out that
the two types of lines named are derived from a natural symplectic polarity 
in the space. The square model of the space, apparently first described in
notes written in October and December, 1978, makes this polarity clearly visible:

A coordinate-free approach to symplectic structure

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Play

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 7:47 pm

From a recreational-mathematics weblog yesterday:

"This appears to be the arts section of the post,
so I’ll leave Martin Probert’s page on
The Survival, Origin and Mathematics of String Figures
here. I’ll be back to pick it up at the end. Maybe it’d like
to play with Steven H. Cullinane’s pages on the
Finite Geometry of the Square and Cube."

I doubt they would play well together.

Perhaps the offensive linking of  the purely recreational topic
of string figures to my own work was suggested by the
string figures' resemblance to figures of projective geometry.

A pairing I prefer:  Desargues and Galois —

IMAGE- Concepts of Space: The large Desargues configuration and two figures illustrating Cullinane models of Galois geometry

For further details, see posts on Desargues and Galois.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Classical Galois

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:26 pm

IMAGE- The large Desargues configuration and Desargues's theorem in light of Galois geometry

Click image for more details.

To enlarge image, click here.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Mystery Box III: Inside, Outside

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 2:28 pm

(Continued from Mystery Box, Feb. 4, and Mystery Box II, Feb. 5.)

The Box

Inside the Box

Outside the Box

For the connection of the inside  notation to the outside  geometry,
see Desargues via Galois.

(For a related connection to curves  and surfaces  in the outside
geometry, see Hudson's classic Kummer's Quartic Surface  and
Rosenhain and Göpel Tetrads in PG(3,2).)

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Up-to-Date Geometry

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 7:24 pm

The following excerpt from a January 20, 2013, preprint shows that
a Galois-geometry version of the large Desargues 154203 configuration,
although based on the nineteenth-century work of Galois* and of Fano,** 
may at times have twenty-first-century applications.

IMAGE- James Atkinson, Jan. 2013 preprint on Yang-Baxter maps mentioning finite geometry

Some context —

Atkinson's paper does not use the square model of PG(3,2), which later
in 2013 provided a natural view of the large Desargues 154203 configuration.
See my own Classical Geometry in Light of Galois Geometry.  Atkinson's
"subset of 20 lines" corresponds to 20 of the 80 Rosenhain tetrads
mentioned in that later article and pictured within 4×4 squares in Hudson's
1905 classic Kummer's Quartic Surface.

* E. Galois, definition of finite fields in "Sur la Théorie des Nombres,"
  Bulletin des Sciences Mathématiques de M. Férussac,
  Vol. 13, 1830, pp. 428-435.

** G. Fano, definition of PG(3,2) in "Sui Postulati Fondamentali…,"
    Giornale di Matematiche, Vol. 30, 1892, pp. 106-132.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Desargues via Galois

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:12 pm

The following image gives a brief description
of the geometry discussed in last spring's
Classical Geometry in Light of Galois Geometry.

IMAGE- The large Desargues configuration in light of Galois geometry

Update of Aug. 7, 2013:  See also an expanded PDF version.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Sermon

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 am

(Simplicity continued)

"Understanding a metaphor is like understanding a geometrical
truth. Features of various geometrical figures or of various contexts
are pulled into revealing alignment with one another by  the
demonstration or the metaphor.

What is 'revealed' is not that the alignment is possible; rather,
that the alignment is possible reveals the presence of already-
existing shapes or correspondences that lay unnoticed. To 'see' a
proof or 'get' a metaphor is to experience the significance of the
correspondence for what the thing, concept, or figure is ."

— Jan Zwicky, Wisdom & Metaphor , page 36 (left)

Zwicky illustrates this with Plato's diamond figure
​from the Meno  on the facing page— her page 36 (right).

A more sophisticated geometrical figure—

Galois-geometry key to
Desargues' theorem:

   D   E   F
 S'  P Q R
 S  P' Q' R'
 O  P1 Q1 R1

For an explanation, see 
Classical Geometry in Light of Galois Geometry.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The Broken Tablet

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 3:33 am

This post was suggested by a search for the
Derridean phrase "necessary possibility"* that
led to web pages on a conference at Harvard
on Friday and Saturday, March 26**-27, 2010,
on Derrida and Religion .

The conference featured a talk titled
"The Poetics of the Broken Tablet."

I prefer the poetics of projective geometry.

An illustration— The restoration of the full
15-point "large" Desargues configuration in
place of the diminished 10-point Desargues
configuration that is usually discussed.

IMAGE- The proof of the converse of Desargues' theorem involves a third triangle.

Click on the image for further details.

* See a discussion of this phrase in
  the context of Brazilian religion.

** See also my own philosophical reflections
   on Friday, March 26, 2010:
   "You Can't Make This Stuff Up." 

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Projective Analysis

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 8:00 pm

A Nested Sequence of Complete N-points and Their Sections

The complete space 6-point
(6 points in general position in space,
5 lines on each point, and 15 lines, 2 points on each)
has as a section 
the large Desargues configuration
(15 points, 4 lines on each, and 20 lines, 3 points on each).

(Veblen and Young, Vol. 1, exercise 11, p. 53)

The large Desargues configuration may in turn be viewed as
the complete space 5-point
(5 points, 4 lines on each, and 10 lines, 2 points on each)
together with its section
the Desargues configuration
(10 points, 3 lines on each, and 10 lines, 3 points on each).

(Veblen and Young, Vol. I, pages 40-42)

The Desargues configuration may in turn be viewed as
the complete space 4-point (tetrahedron)
(4 points, 3 lines on each, and 6 lines, 2 points on each)
together with its section
the complete (plane) 4-side (complete quadrilateral)
(6 points, 2 lines on each, and 4 lines, 3 points on each).

The complete quadrilateral may in turn be viewed as
the complete 3-point (triangle)
(3 points, 2 lines on each, and 3 lines, 2 points on each)
together with its section 
the three-point line
(3 points, 1 line on each, and 1 line, 3 points on the line).

The three-point line may in turn be viewed as
the complete 2-point
(2 points, 1 line on each, and 1 line with 2 points on the line)
together with its section
the complete 1-point
(1 point and 0 lines).

Update of May 1: For related material, see the exercises at the end of Ch. II
in Veblen and Young's Projective Geometry, Vol. I  (Ginn, 1910). For instance:

Sunday, April 28, 2013

The Octad Generator

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 11:00 pm

… And the history of geometry  
Desargues, Pascal, Brianchon and Galois
in the light of complete n-points in space.

(Rewritten for clarity at about 10 AM ET April 29, with quote from Dowling added.
Updated with a reference to a Veblen and Young exercise (on p. 53) on April 30.)

Veblen and Young, Projective Geometry, Vol. I ,
Ginn and Company, 1910, page 39:

"The Desargues configuration. A very important configuration
is obtained by taking the plane section of a complete space five-point."

Each of figures 14 and 15 above has 15 points and 20 lines.
The Desargues configuration within each figure is denoted by
10 white points and 10 solid lines, with 3 points on each line and
3 lines on each point. Black  points and dashed  lines indicate the
complete space five-point and lines connecting it to the plane section
containing the Desargues configuration.

In a 1915 University of Chicago doctoral thesis, Archibald Henderson
used a complete space six -point to construct a configuration of
15 points and 20 lines in the context not of Desargues '  theorem, but
rather of Brianchon 's theorem and of the Pascal  hexagram.
Henderson's 1915 configuration is, it turns out, isomorphic to that of
the 15 points and 20 lines in the configuration constructed via a
complete space five -point five years earlier by Veblen and Young.
(See, in Veblen and Young's 1910 Vol. I, exercise 11, page 53:
"A plane section of a 6-point in space can  be considered as
3 triangles perspective in pairs from 3 collinear points with
corresponding sides meeting in 3 collinear points." This is the
large  Desargues configuration. See Classical Geometry in Light of 
Galois Geometry
.)

For this large  Desargues configuration see April 19.
For Henderson's complete six –point, see The Six-Set (April 23).
That post ends with figures relating the large  Desargues configuration
to the Galois  geometry PG(3,2) that underlies the Curtis
Miracle Octad Generator  and the large Mathieu group M24 —

IMAGE- Geometry of the Six-Set, Steven H. Cullinane, April 23, 2013

See also Note on the MOG Correspondence from April 25, 2013.

That correspondence was also discussed in a note 28 years ago, on this date in 1985.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Abstraction

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 2:00 pm

(Continued from December 31st, 2012)

"Principles before personalities." — AA saying

Art Principles

Part I:

Part II:

Baker's 1922 Principles of Geometry

IMAGE- The Large Desargues Configuration

Art Personalities

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Caution: Slow Art

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:00 pm

"Of course, DeLillo being DeLillo,
it’s the deeper implications of the piece —
what it reveals about the nature of
film, perception and time — that detain him."

— Geoff Dyer, review of Point Omega

Related material:

A phrase of critic Robert Hughes,
"slow art," in this journal.

A search for that phrase yields the following
figure from a post on DeLillo of Oct. 12, 2011:

The 3x3 square

The above 3×3 grid is embedded in a 
somewhat more sophisticated example
of conceptual art from April 1, 2013:

IMAGE- A Galois-geometry key to Desargues' theorem

Update of April 12, 2013

The above key uses labels from the frontispiece
to Baker's 1922 Principles of Geometry, Vol. I ,
that shows a three-triangle version of Desargues's theorem.

A different figure, from a site at National Tsing Hua University,
shows the three triangles of Baker's figure more clearly:

IMAGE- Desargues' theorem with three triangles (the large Desargues configuration) and Galois-geometry version

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Museum Piece

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 3:01 pm

Roberta Smith in 2011 on the American Folk Art Museum (see previous post):

"It could be argued that we need a museum of folk art
the way we need a museum of modern art,
to shine a very strong, undiluted light on
a very important achievement."

Some other aesthetic remarks:

"We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food.
What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time
as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes
of perception and whose skill and doggedness
make you think and feel; art that isn't merely sensational,
that doesn't get its message across in 10 seconds,
that isn't falsely iconic, that hooks onto something
deep-running in our natures. In a word, art that is
the very opposite of mass media. For no spiritually
authentic art can beat mass media at their own game."

— Robert Hughes, speech of June 2, 2004,
     quoted here June 15, 2007.

Perhaps, as well as museums of modern art and of folk art,
we need a Museum of Slow Art. 

One possible exhibit, from this journal Monday:

The diagram on the left is from 1922.  The 20 small squares at right
that each have 4 subsquares darkened were discussed, in a different
context, in 1905. They were re-illustrated, in a new context
(Galois geometry), in 1986. The "key" square, and the combined
illustration, is from April 1, 2013. For deeper background, see
Classical Geometry in Light of Galois Geometry.

Those who prefer faster art may consult Ten Years After.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Baker on Configurations

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:11 am

The geometry posts of Sunday and Monday have been
placed in finitegeometry.org as

Classical Geometry in Light of Galois Geometry.

Some background:

See Baker, Principles of Geometry , Vol. II, Note I
(pp. 212-218)—

On Certain Elementary Configurations, and
on the Complete Figure for Pappus's Theorem

and Vol. II, Note II (pp. 219-236)—

On the Hexagrammum Mysticum  of Pascal.

Monday's elucidation of Baker's Desargues-theorem figure
treats the figure as a 15420configuration (15 points, 
4 lines on each, and 20 lines, 3 points on each).

Such a treatment is by no means new. See Baker's notes
referred to above, and 

"The Complete Pascal Figure Graphically Presented,"
a webpage by J. Chris Fisher and Norma Fuller.

What is new in the Monday Desargues post is the graphic
presentation of Baker's frontispiece figure using Galois geometry :
specifically, the diamond theorem square model of PG(3,2).

See also Cremona's kernel, or nocciolo :

Baker on Cremona's approach to Pascal—

"forming, in Cremona's phrase, the nocciolo  of the whole."

IMAGE- Definition of 'nocciolo' as 'kernel'

A related nocciolo :

IMAGE- 'Nocciolo': A 'kernel' for Pascal's Hexagrammum Mysticum: The 15 2-subsets of a 6-set as points in a Galois geometry.

Click on the nocciolo  for some
geometric background.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Desargues via Rosenhain

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 6:00 pm

Background: Rosenhain and Göpel Tetrads in PG(3,2)

Introduction:

The Large Desargues Configuration

Added by Steven H. Cullinane on Friday, April 19, 2013

Desargues' theorem according to a standard textbook:

"If two triangles are perspective from a point
they are perspective from a line."

The converse, from the same book:

"If two triangles are perspective from a line
they are perspective from a point."

Desargues' theorem according to Wikipedia 
combines the above statements:

"Two triangles are in perspective axially  [i.e., from a line]
if and only if they are in perspective centrally  [i.e., from a point]."

A figure often used to illustrate the theorem, 
the Desargues configuration , has 10 points and 10 lines,
with 3 points on each line and 3 lines on each point.

A discussion of the "if and only if" version of the theorem
in light of Galois geometry requires a larger configuration—
15 points and 20 lines, with 3 points on each line 
and 4 lines on each point.

This large  Desargues configuration involves a third triangle,
needed for the proof   (though not the statement ) of the 
"if and only if" version of the theorem. Labeled simply
"Desargues' Theorem," the large  configuration is the
frontispiece to Volume I (Foundations)  of Baker's 6-volume
Principles of Geometry .

Point-line incidence in this larger configuration is,
as noted in the post of April 1 that follows
this introduction, described concisely 
by 20 Rosenhain tetrads  (defined in 1905 by
R. W. H. T. Hudson in Kummer's Quartic Surface ).

The third triangle, within the larger configuration,
is pictured below.

IMAGE- The proof of the converse of Desargues' theorem involves a third triangle.

 

 

 

A connection discovered today (April 1, 2013)—

(Click to enlarge the image below.)

Update of April 18, 2013

Note that  Baker's Desargues-theorem figure has three triangles,
ABC, A'B'C', A"B"C", instead of the two triangles that occur in
the statement of the theorem. The third triangle appears in the
course of proving, not just stating, the theorem (or, more precisely,
its converse). See, for instance, a note on a standard textbook for 
further details.

(End of April 18, 2013 update.)

Update of April 14, 2013

See Baker's Proof (Edited for the Web) for a detailed explanation 
of the above picture of Baker's Desargues-theorem frontispiece.

(End of April 14, 2013 update.)

Update of April 12, 2013

A different figure, from a site at National Tsing Hua University,
shows the three triangles of Baker's figure more clearly:

IMAGE- Desargues' theorem with three triangles, and Galois-geometry version

(End of update of April 12, 2013)

Update of April 13, 2013

Another in a series of figures illustrating
Desargues's theorem in light of Galois geometry:
IMAGE- Veblen and Young 1910 Desargues illustration, with 2013 Galois-geometry version

See also the original Veblen-Young figure in context.

(End of update of April 13, 2013)

Rota's remarks, while perhaps not completely accurate, provide some context
for the above Desargues-Rosenhain connection.  For some other context,
see the interplay in this journal between classical and finite geometry, i.e.
between Euclid and Galois.

For the recent  context of the above finite-geometry version of Baker's Vol. I
frontispiece, see Sunday evening's finite-geometry version of Baker's Vol. IV
frontispiece, featuring the Göpel, rather than the Rosenhain, tetrads.

For a 1986 illustration of Göpel and Rosenhain tetrads (though not under
those names), see Picturing the Smallest Projective 3-Space.

In summary… the following classical-geometry figures
are closely related to the Galois geometry PG(3,2):

Volume I of Baker's Principles  
has a cover closely related to 
the Rosenhain tetrads in PG(3,2)
Volume IV of Baker's Principles 
has a cover closely related to
the Göpel tetrads in PG(3,2) 
Foundations
(click to enlarge)

 

 

 

 

Higher Geometry
(click to enlarge)

 

 

 

 

 

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