Postulates and Axioms

Abstract

A STRONG committee, appointed, or rather re-appointed, for the purpose, reported last year to the British Association upon the Syllabus drawn up by the Association for the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching. I have only just seen a copy of the report, and I wish to point out that it incidentally touches in a misleading fashion upon a matter which, though primarily of only historical interest, is really of theoretical importance too, if not (in the strictest sense) for the special purpose of the committee; I mean upon the different ways of distributing the fundamental assumptions under the two heads of postulate and axiom.