[extropy-chat] Most Stupid (and polyhedra)

[scerir]

[boris kg]
This is the most stupid list 
on which I have ever been!


"Stupid" from "stupere", which means 
to be amazed, confounded. So you are 
probably right.
s.


William C. Waterhouse in his "The Discovery 
of the Regular Solids", in "Archive for History 
of Exact Science", v.9, 1972-1973, pp. 212-221 writes:
"The history of the regular solids thus rests almost 
entirely on a scholium to Euclid which reads as follows: 
<<In this book, the 13th, are constructed the 5 figures 
called Platonic, which however do not belong to Plato. 
Three of these 5 figures, the cube, pyramid, and dodecahedron, 
belong to the Pythagoreans; while the octahedron and icosahedron
belong to Theaetetus>>". (I'm indebted to Paul Bien for
that).

But the "platonic solids" are neither Platonic nor Pythagorean.
They were known to the inhabitants of North East Scotland in the
late ***neolithic*** period. This is astonishingly little known.
The Ashmolean Museum has the 5 figures on display! You can see 
the amazing picture in this beautiful paper by M.Atiyah and 
P.Sutcliffe (I'm indebted to John McKay for that).
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0303071 (--> the pdf)