[Math] Denial of the 5th postulate of Euclid

euclidean-geometrylogic

I am trying to recover the denial of the Playfair's axiom but it is logical a bit strange.
"To a given line and a point not on it, there is only one line through this point parallel to it". This should become
"To a given line and a point not on it, there is more than one line through this point parallel to it."

With the logical negation I never come on the second statement. I tried the following form which I suppose it is wrong.

$\forall l \forall P : P\notin l\exists! m:((P\in m)\wedge (m\parallel l))$

Any advice? thanks 🙂

Best Answer

Your expression is indeed wrong, since $\forall l\forall P:P\notin l$ means that "no point is on a line". What you want is in fact: $$\forall l\forall P\big(P\notin l\to\exists !m\left(P\in m\land m||l\right)\big)$$ which translates as: "for any line $l$, if a point is not on this line, then there is a unique line $m$ to which this point belongs and which is also parallel to $l$".

Now, for the contradiction of this statement, recall that $\neg\forall x\equiv\exists x\neg$ and $\neg(A\to B)\equiv A\land\neg B$. However, it is slightly more complicated to negate $\exists !x$, and I refer you to the (excellent) accepted answer on this post. The idea is that, to contradict "there exists a unique $x$", we want to say "either there is no $x$ or there is more than one". Thus the negation of the statement is: $$\exists l\exists P\big(P\notin l\land\neg\exists !m(P\in m\land m||l)\big)$$ $$\exists l\exists P\Big(P\notin l\land\forall m\big(P\in m\land m||l\to\exists m'(P\in m'\land m'||l\land m'\neq m)\big)\Big)$$ which is precisely what you want, since it states "there is a line $l$ and point not on it, such that if a line $m$ goes through that point and is parallel to $l$, then there is another such line".

From the point of view of logic, this works if there is no line going through $P$ at all, or if none can be found to be parallel to $l$. But of course, geometrical considerations remove the need for these cases and yield your desired statement of "To a given line and a point not on it, there is more than one line through this point parallel to it".

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