Abstract
Even for a highly original work, such as Jean-Victor Poncelet’s Traité des propriétés projectives des figures (1822), previous work prepared the ground. The claim of this paper is that the prevalence of problems and propositions in which collinear points (or concurrent lines) are assumed or demonstrated is a good measure of that groundwork. Euclid, Apollonius, Ptolemy, Pappus, Desargues, Monge, L. Carnot, and C. J. Brianchon all have roles in the story, with special attention to the first decade of the nineteenth century.
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Baltus, C. (2022). Leading to Poncelet: A Story of Collinear Points. In: Zack, M., Schlimm, D. (eds) Research in History and Philosophy of Mathematics. Annals of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/ Société canadienne d’histoire et de philosophie des mathématiques. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95201-3_3
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