PhiloWikiConceptsPhilosophersBooksInteractive graph

Concept

Point (geometry)

Point (geometry)
derivative work: Pbroks13 (talk) ACP_3.GIF: User Jean-Luc W on fr.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Overview

fundamental object of geometry: locus within which we can distinguish no other locus than itself

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

  1. Thus the proved importance in physical science of the concepts of points in time and points in space is a tribute to the wide applicability of this principle of convergence. Euclid defines a point as without parts and without magnitude. In modern language a point is often described as an ideal limit by indefinitely continuing the process of diminishing a volume (or area). Points as thus conceived are often called…

    Alfred North Whitehead, The organisation of thought, educational and scientific

    Names Point several times; states what Point is.

    Read the chapter · Open in the reader

  2. We could not, indeed, conceive any other means of constructing a point than to mark it by the meeting of two lines. Thus, in the most common system, that of _rectilinear co-ordinates_, properly so called, the point is determined by the intersection of two right lines, each of which remains constantly parallel to a fixed axis, at a…

    Auguste Comte, The philosophy of mathematics

    Names Point several times; states what Point is.

    Read the chapter · Open in the reader

  3. The points of such an instantaneous space are event-particles and the straight lines are rects. Let the time-system be named {alpha}, and let the moment of time-system {alpha} to which our quick perception of nature approximates be called M. Any straight line r in space {alpha} is a locus of points and each point is a point-track which is a locus of event-particles. Thus in the four-dimensional geometry of all…

    Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919

    Names Point several times; states what Point is.

    Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Philosophers who discussed Point (geometry)

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Gnosticism.

Explore Point (geometry) in the interactive graph →