"Desrgues commences [in the Brouillon project] with a statement of the doctrine of continuity as laid down by Kepler: thus the points at the opposite ends of a straight line are regarded as coincident, parallel lines are treated as meeting at a point at infinity, and parallel planes on a line at infinity, while a straight line may be considered as a circle whose center is at infinity. The theory of involution of six points, with its special cases, is laid down, and the projective property of pencils in involution is established. The theory of polar lines is expounded and its analogue in space suggested. A tangent is defined as the limiting case of a secant, and an asymptote as a tangent at infinity. Desargues shows that the lines which join four points in a plane determine three pairs of lines in involution on any transversal, and from any conic through the four points another pair of lines can be obtained which are in involution with any two of the former. He proves that the points of intersection of the diagonals and the two pairs of opposite sides of any quadrilateral inscribed in a conic are a conjugate triad with respect to the conic, and when one of the three points is at infinity its polar is a diameter; but he fails to explain the case in which the quadrilateral is a parallelogran, although he had formed the conception of a straight line which was wholly at infinity. The book, therefore, may be fairly said to contain the fundamental theorems on involution, homology, poles and polars, and perspective."
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Girard Desargues
(21 February 1591 – September 1661) was a French mathematician, architect and engineer, who is considered one of the founders of . , the , and the Desargues crater are named in his honour.
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