Hopefully this work will come back into print!

Lachterman wanted to get at the idea of modernity, at what made modern thought from Descartes to Kant something very different than the strain of philosophy passing through Aristotle and Plato. But he also wanted by the title to signify that geometry, contrary to Aristotle's claim, does have an ethos of its own. The notion that mathematics has a guaranteed method and that there is only one way for a mathematician to comport himself with respect to the object of his study, these things are very foreign to Lachterman's study. He wanted to show that the ancients and moderns had radically different notions of the role that construction plays in geometry, and ultimately in philosophy itself. The ancients viewed construction as an adjunct to real demonstration; the moderns view construction as identical with the demonstration itself. The two are guided by a very different "ethos", to use an Aristotelian term that is not as loaded with the moral aspect as our modern term, "ethics".

I think he succeeded, but I leave that to you the reader. If you take philosophy seriously and cannot buy this book, find it at a good library or through interlibrary loan. It deserves a lot more attention than it has received.

Dang, this book is S-L-O-W.

I have not finished this book, so some may say that I am not 'qualified' to review it, and on some levels I agree.

However, let it be known, this book is NOT a page turner!

If you have some cash to spare, get the book, if your on a budget, purchase at a later time!

Hey, this is a pretty insane book. The images are so intense they left me literally in a daze. Absolutely the best choice for anyone interested in rave culture ART, rather than the usual pop fiction or "drugumentary" fare.

This book is trance inducing in a totally different way than any book I've ever read. It isn't just a story about rave culture, it actually IS trance. It's hard to explain - reading it is sort of like having a dream, or experiencing an altered state without drugs. It's incredibly cool, and kind of bizarre.