Talk:Euclid and His Modern Rivals/Preface

Trivium: This preface contains a quote which, when distorted by a fisheye lens effect, became one of the first Wikipedia logos: In one respect this book is an experiment, and may chance to prove a failure: I mean that I have not thought it necessary to maintain throughout the gravity of style which scientific writers usually affect, and which has somehow come to be regarded as an 'inseparable accident' of scientific teaching. I never could quite see the reasonableness of this immemorial law: subjects there are, no doubt, which are in their essence too serious to admit of any lightness of treatment—but I cannot recognise Geometry as one of them. Nevertheless it will, I trust, be found that I have permitted myself a glimpse of the comic side of things only at fitting seasons, when the tired reader might well crave a moment's breathing-space, and not on any occasion where it could endanger the continuity of a line of argument. Perhaps the idea was that, just like Carroll was breaking with tradition in his prose tone, the WikiWay of doing things was a break with established ways of writing encyclopedias, and a more informal one at that. Arlo Barnes (talk) 00:36, 23 January 2019 (UTC)