De Rerum Natura

In a previous post I erroneously claimed that the mathematician Hilbert advocated teaching geometry in the dark. Hilbert’s “Foundations of Geometry” axiomatized the subject and carried out its exposition without a single diagram. I found the correct attribution yesterday while re-reading Hofstadter’s foreword to “King of Infinite Space”, a biography of geometer David Coxeter.

Hofstadter does not say for certain who advocated the practice of geometry in the dark and can only recollect that it was some 19th century geometer — possibly Steiner, Plucker, von Staudt, or Feuerbach.