From GALEN STRAWSON
In his article on Albert Einstein (2 January), John Gribbin identifies
Karl Gauss as the discoverer of non-Euclidean geometry. In fact, the Scottish
philosopher Thomas Reid, who was widely read in Germany in the late 18th
century, has a very good claim to have discovered and described the essential
features of a non-Euclidean geometry in 1764 – 13 years before Gauss was
born – in a book called Inquiry into the Human Mind (see chapter 6, section
9, ‘Of the geometry of visibles’). The case for Reid is put by Norman Daniels
in his book Thomas Reid’s Inquiry (Burt Franklin, 1974) and is approved
by Keith Lehrer in his book Thomas Reid (Routledge, 1989).
Galen Strawson Jesus College, Oxford
