Beauty in Euclid's Geometry

Images of beauty abound in the world that surrounds us. Contemplating the colors of a picturesque fall afternoon, I’m reminded of the scenic sunsets behind the Agua Volcano in Guatemala that I saw as a child, and hearing a jazz ballad sung in Ella Fitzgerald’s charming voice takes me back to the apartment where I flipped through pictures of Frank Lloyd Wright’s skillfully designed buildings and discussed them with an attractive lover. The diversity of Beauty’s incarnations is reflected in the many adjectives that can be ascribed to the things where she is present, yet there seems to be something common to them. From the lines of the sunset and the almost perfectly triangular shape of the volcano to the carefully studied proportions of architectural designs and the sharply defined muscles of an athlet

Geometry helps us cross the threshold between the visible and the invisible, as we take those figures we see and make sense of them in the unseen, measuring earth with tools akin to our rational nature. When we cross this threshold we discover that beauty, as other forms, can and do exist on their own and speaking of Beauty objectively is no longer absurd.

Focusing our mind on the metaphysical plane where the triangle exists and by following Euclid’s reasoning we find that we too can have access to that realm where we’ll see true images, rather than likenesses of them. This uniquely human exercise of traveling with the mind trains us in the art of searching for those things that are unique to our human nature—the search for Beauty, Virtue, Freedom and Truth.

Some topics in this essay:
Pythagoras Euclid’s, Freedom Truth, Lloyd Wright’s, Euclid Beauty, Euclid Alexandria, , Ella Fitzgerald’s, Volcano Guatemala, worth living, right-angled triangle, cross threshold, measuring earth,