He also had some complicated and mostly wrong ideas about mathematics (he really wanted to square circles, but who doesn't?) ... but one that he did have was to say that if the King should declare that Euclid's Fifth Postulate, the parallel postulate, was wrong, then it was wrong in the kingdom. And, it would turn out, the parallel postulate is the one that you can suppose is wrong and get a mathematics that's not just interesting, but closer to what happens in the real world. Heck of a lucky stroke there. (Well, maybe not; everybody suspected there was something fishy about that postulate.)
(His mathematics drew him into quarrels with John Wallis and party that superficially seem crazily intense over nothing. This is because they merged with the political disputes of the English Civil War, Protectorate, and Restoration, and mathematicians forget there was such a thing.)
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(His mathematics drew him into quarrels with John Wallis and party that superficially seem crazily intense over nothing. This is because they merged with the political disputes of the English Civil War, Protectorate, and Restoration, and mathematicians forget there was such a thing.)