An everpresent reference of the XVIITH century intellectual production: Euclid’s elements

Resumen

Euclid’s Elements, written in the third century BC., during the reign of Ptolemy I, is, second to the Bible, only in number of reprints. Those published in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries are, either philological examinations of the corpus, or the basis of philosophical commentaries, or mathematical treatises or even pedagogical handbooks. Among those very numerous reprints, I shall only quote from the version offered by Christopher Clavius, which, as far as we know, was referred to by all XVII th century specialists. This Euclidean reference fed equally all fields of intellectual production, whether philosophical, mathematical or pedagogical and the Elements was the common, cultural inspiration of mathematicians and natural philosophers from the end of the XVIth century to that of the XVIIth.