¶ Spherical Triangle Sequence
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Index Entry
Spherical Triangle Sequence:
"All this comes because man starts with the idea of over-simplifying. . . what seems to be reality. The Earth at that time seemed to be a plane going to infinity. So you were dealing in a plane. So you start your geometry with plane geometry. You start trigonometry with plane trigonometry. But in due course you discovered that it wasn’t a plane, it was a sphere. A closed system, not an open system. And you found that you were only defining on one side of the line because the other side went on to infinity. So you learned about the triangle, and the circle, and all these areas bound by closed lines. And you learned that all logic and reliability is one one side of a line: the area bound. On the other side of the line-- you couldn’t define it because it went to infinity-- therefore it is undefinable. So as geometry is taught to you, and trigonometry is taught to you, you can only deal with one side of the line.
“But if you are operational, the way Einstein is, and say I’ve got to take into account all the conditions that obtain at the time of the experience, you can say that in drawing a line on a blackboard that the blackboard does not go on to infinity. It comes to its edge and the edge is a slate,”
