Poems about Euclid

 It has been a while since I sat down ad read a poem. I would probably go back as far as the English 12 provincial that they no longer do now to find my last poem reading.

When I tried to look into information about Euclid's life, I was surprised at how little information is retained over the course of time. The same is not true when I look at Pythagoras or Archimedes. where great tales pass down to people that don't study much math. In fact, I saw an interesting argument about Euclid being a pen name, and a group of mathematicians instead published results under this name. While this is not commonly accepted, it shows the lack of information and how little we can know about Euclid's life.

The poem makes many references to Beauty. Since it's capitalized, it might be personification (or not, forgive my literature analysis) of some idea. Now normally for poems like this, I would think Beauty refers to maybe beautiful objects, beautiful people, or beautiful scenes or nature. However, since it talks about Euclid, I am going to guess that math is what Beauty is referring to. The poem then goes on about how only Euclid has seen the beauty and no one else has, and that they would be grateful to just hear about the sandals (as an aside, why sandals? is it mathematically elegant?). I suppose this could refer to Euclid knowing the beauty of math and concepts that others will not be able to understand and appreciate, and praises Euclid for his accomplishment. 

Now moving on to the parody, it seems to have a lot of questions directed at the poet. It seems to ask, why Euclid? Why sandals? Why are other people content with just hearing sandals walking sound and not Beauty (math) itself? I think this might be coming from a point of view where people could always learn and appreciate mathematical concepts without being great mathematicians. He might be a little angry about the poet dismissing or categorizing the understanding of math to Euclid because he was a great mathematician at the time, and instead wants to point out that math is not something exclusively reserved to mathematicians.

I like the parody's message as we should not simply tell ourselves that great people in the past have done it, and I won't be able to do the same. I think coming from a modern scientific viewpoint, discoveries accumulate over time, and no one knows what and when will be the next major discovery that can change the way we live. Of course, past results have lasting importance as our new knowledge often builds on them, and they inspire us for new discoveries. However, we should realize that even so called "ordinary people" as implied in the original poem all have different roles in society that enable such discovery to be made.