You wrote
>There is of course the claim that Aristotle mentions the possibility of
non-
>Euclidean geometry in the Eudemian Ethics. Toth makes that claim in
>Scientific American.
It is a coincidence that you should mention Imre Toth in your electronic
mail message today, for tomorrow evening he is lecturing here at our
college,
St. John's College, in Annapolis, Maryland. He is giving more informal
sessions on Saturday & Sunday. One of them is about the very topic that
you mention:
the foreshadowing of non-Euclidean geometry.
Of course, Euclid holds back in using his postulate of non-parallelism
until his 29th proposition. Thus there are 28 propositions that precede it
that are independent of his fifth postulate. Was Euclid trying to see what
he could do without using it?
Best wishes,
Sam Kutler