This one is my favorite. I read it at least once a year.

FJ

Let see

Book alpha of the Metaphysics (Aristotle)

Right now I am on book 4 of the Physics, where he treats of time.

Reading the questions on the Trinity in the Summa (q.27-43). Just did q. 13, 14, 18, 19 as prelimnaries

Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit (just read his Philosophy of History)

Reading John of St. Thomas's Concursus Theologicus (in a horrible edition which was made worse by being mimeographed by someone ignorant of Latin).

Reading several anti-Pelagian tracts of Augustine (De Spiritu et littera, de correptione et gratia, de dono perservatiae, de praedestinatione sanctorum)

Reading Lobachevsky and his utterly false geometry. About to read Dedikin

Reading questions 5 and 6 of Aquinas' Commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate (aka the Division and Method of Sciences)

The everlasting Man, and The man who know too much, by G.K. Chesterton

I'm in the middle of a terrific book on Jewish prayer: "Praying like the Jew, Jesus", but Timothy Jones. Also, finishing the Holy Father's book "Jesus of Nazareth."

What is "utterly false" about hyperbolic geometry?

Or maybe you were employing -- er, hyperbole?

I have started to read "Triumph" I like it a lot.

Keating's "Catholicism and Fundamentalism" and Fr. Lukefahr's "The Privilege of Being Catholic"

If I remember correctly, PED is a radical constructivist, only Euclidean geometry is valid, everything else is 'false' and only positive integers 'exist', all other numbers 'don't exist' or can be conceived only in terms of the integers.

It isn't without its problems, though. For example, Crocker writes about Protestants believing in predestination as if Catholics don't. He either doesn't understand the differences between Catholic and Protestant views on predestination, or didn't have the space to discuss them, or perhaps the book has been poorly edited. But I suppose that's a minor issue since it's not a theology text. It might give readers the wrong idea, though.

Even if I were not a constructionist, Lobachevsky is false, at least the treatise I am reading. Geometrical Investigations on the Theory of Parallels

It is certainly true that you can take many of the propositions and apply them to true geometry, but his imaginary geometry is false. He claims that he is doing plane, straight line geometry.

Straight lines are not asymptotic, and to posit a planar geometry that denies the 5th postulate denies something that is evidently true. The angle of parallelism is always 90 degrees in math when speaking of straight lines, but for Lobachevsky they are always less.

And so if you start from the principles that Lobachevsky does then his geomtry is false, at least starting with proposition 22. I am sorry but the angles in a triangle equal two rights, that is true; to state that they never do, but are always less than 2 rights is therefore false.

There are two takes one can have here. Either one claims we do not know which is true "Euclidean geometry" or "Non Euclidean geometry" because we do not know whether the 5th postulate is true. But that is absurd. Or one can reject the geometry as formulated by Lobachevsky, and apply most of his propositions to curved space geometry, in which case they are valid and just as true as Euclidean planar geometry. But even then not every single proposition can thus be tranferred. For instance propositions 32 and 33. These follow only through perverse thinking...denying the 5th postulate in the context of planar geometry, for the boundary line would, since the 5th postulate is true (and the law of non contradiction therefore says Lobachevsky is wrong), actually be a straight line, not curved and the circle would not approach it as you made you radius bigger and you would not get the monstrous idea of an infinite circle.

Though it is bizarre that if you take his circle with an infinite radius and make a sphere and do geometry on that sphere you get Euclidean geometry. Which perhaps should be a sign that Lobachevsky was wrong to treat his geometry as planar and should have seen it must apply only in curved space (like the inside of a trumpet)

Oh, and while I think that number most properly applies to discrete quantity, and hence is a multitude of units (Euclid), I recognise an analogical use that arises when number is used to number magnitudes. Hence it is that we get fractions and even irrational numbers. But I think that it is obvious that is not what we first mean by number. Likewise I recognise a further extension when negative number is used to signify direction. But again, the first use which arises in the way we think is discrete quantity and negative quantity makes no sense (I have negative 5 horses?)...but anyways I am rambling now...

Time well spent.

I like to have a few books going at the same time...

Guds Vänner (Friends of God) - St. JoseMaria
Man and Women he Created Them - JPII
Medieval Reader (Anthology of various obscure and fascinating texts)
Pocket Book of Father Brown - Chesterton

PED,

It was proved a long time ago (around 1890 to be exact) that Euclid's geometry and Lobachevsky's are both equally 'true'. Or to be more precise, that if one of them is 'false' then so is the other. So, if Lobachevsky's geometry is 'false' then so is Euclids.

Have you actually read Lobachevsky? You are denying the law of non contradiction. I am not denying the validity of hyperebolic geometry btw, but I am denying that Lobachevsky's writings are true, because he does not actually attempt to do hyperbolic geometry. That is later and taken from him.

I am currently reading "My Life with the Saints" by James Martin, SJ

What Lobachevsky does is he first assumes that the fifth postulate is false, and then he tries to derive a contradiction from this assumption, and he does a bunch of stuff and concludes no contradiction exists, and that hence we have an alternative geometry. I am primarily a geometer, bu not expert on Non-Euclidean geometry, nevertheless I honestly don't know what you are referring to.

At any rate, you seemed to not like my description of your earlier as a 'radical constructivist', well, you have defended constructisvism in the past, so I assumed that your views hadn't changed since our last discussion. Or perhaps you didn't like my use of the word 'radical', well, that isn't a term of abuse, but merely descriptive. There are even books out there defending this philosophy on 'radical constructivism'.

So GCK, is the Father Brown a good starting point if you want to read Chesterton?

PED is saying that Lobachevsky creates a non-Euclidean geometry, which is fine, but then says that L. claims his non-Euclidean geometry is a planar geometry.

I haven't read L.'s book (though I have a PDF of it at home), so I don't know whether this is true or not, or whether perhaps PED misunderstood what L. was getting at.