I bought a reissue of this for my father for Christmas a couple years ago. Good stuff. Very pretty.
“Whether or not Byrne’s efforts complicate or simplify Euclid is an interesting and debatable point. Parts of Byrne’s attempt to design `colour-coded’ mathematical proofs are more successful than others, but it is our hope that even the less successful parts can serve as themes for discussion if not models for imitation. The title page of Byrne’s edition, at any rate, illustrates the basic concept of the book rather nicely with a single figure illustrating Euclid’s Proposition 47 (Pythagoras’ Theorem).”
There are nights when I can listen to this over and over again, never mind that it’s me making noise while one of my closest friends plays guitar and sings.
“The purpose of human communication is to make us forget the meaningless context in which we are completely alone and incommunicado, that is, the world in which we are condemned to solitary confinement and death: the world of ‘nature.’”
“Human communication spins a veil around us in the form of the codified world. This veil is made from science and art, philosophy and religion, and it is spun increasingly denser, so that we forget our solitude and death, including the deaths of others whom we love. In short, man communicates with others. He is a ‘political animal,’ not because he is a social animal, but because he is a solitary animal who cannot live in solitude.” -
Vilém Flusser, What is Communication? an essay collected in Vilém Flusser: Writings.
