Publisher's Synopsis
From the Preface.
THE position of any real point in space may be determined by eans of three real coordinates, and any three real quantities may be regarded as determining the position of such a point. In Geometry as in other branches of Pure Mathematics the question naturally arises, whether the quantities concerned need necessarily be real. What, it may be asked, is the nature of the Geometry in which the coordinates of any point may be complex quantities of the form "x + ix', y + iy', z + iz"'? Such a Geometry contains as a particular case the Geometry of real points. From it the Geometry of real points may be deduced (a) by regarding "x', y', z'" as zero, (b) by regarding x, y, z as zero, or (c) by considering only those points, the coordinates of which are real multiples of the same complex quantity "a+ib." The relationship of the more generalised conception of Geometry and of space to the particular case of real Geometry is of importance, as points, whose determining elements are complex quantities, arise both in coordinate and in projective Geometry.
In this book an attempt has been made to work out and determine this relationship. Either of two methods might have been adopted. It would have been possible to lay down certain axioms and premises and to have developed a general theory therefrom. This has been done by other authors. The alternative method, which has been employed here, is to add to the axioms of real Geometry certain additional assumptions. From these, by means of the methods and principles of real Geometry, an extension of the existing ideas and conception of Geometry can be obtained. In this way the reader is able to approach the simpler and more concrete theorems in the first instance, and step by step the well-known theorems are extended and generalised. A conception of the imaginary is thus gradually built up and the relationship between the imaginary and the real is exemplified and developed. The theory as here set forth may be regarded from the analytical point of view as an exposition of the oft quoted but seldom explained "Principle of Continuity."
The fundamental definition of Imaginary points is that given by Dr Karl v. Staudt in his "Beitrage zur Geometrie der Lage"; Nuremberg, 1856 and 1860. The idea of "(a, beta)" figures, independently evolved by the author, is due to J. V. Poncelet, who published it in his "Traite des Proprietes Projectives des Figures" in 1822. The matter contained in four or five pages of Chapter II is taken from the lectures delivered by the late Professor Esson, F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford, and may be partly traced to the writings of v. Staudt. For the remainder of the book the author must take the responsibility. Inaccuracies and inconsistencies may have crept in, but long experience has taught him that these will be found to be due to his own deficiencies and not to fundamental defects in the theory. Those who approach the subject with an open mind will, it is believed, find in these pages a consistent and natural theory of the imaginary. Many problems however still require to be worked out and the subject offers a wide field for further investigations."
