Some seek truth and some doubt it. Some are dedicated to seeking progress in our knowledge of reality, and some find it all too absurd. In the European tradition, the battles between these two warring tribes took place in the shadow of a great fortress. Defenders of truth could raise their fingers over the heads of the sceptics and point upwards to mathematics: a shining crystal palace of certainty surrounded by thick walls of deductions and demonstrations. But the revolution in theories of space and time during the twentieth century finally levelled this fortress. Sceptics have overrun even mathematics. Much of the fashionable relativism that has flourished during the past 30 years took heart from this downfall of mathematics, and with good reason.

Euclid and his Elements

Geometry was the glory of ancient Greece. Building on its beginnings in Egypt and Babylon, the ancient Greeks pursued geometry with extraordinary passion and precision for a thousand years, and first built up the fortress of mathematics on firm foundations.