Geometrism: How geometrical fundamentalism came to shape our world

This thesis critically examines how abstract geometric ideals, initially emerging from Pythagorean thought and Mathematical Platonism, have shaped our understanding and organization of the world in profound and often unrecognized and unexpected ways, ways that are often reductive, alienating, and ideologically charged. The spill of these abstract ideals back into the social production of historically particular but geometrically articulated kinds of space, referred to here, following Bachelard (2014), as geometrism, has profound, socio-political and environmental implications. Specifically, this thesis argues that wherever these ideologically naturalized abstractions come to exert a dominant influence as principles for managing space, the result has been to diminish and disparage the creative possibilities inherent in lived places, circumscribing, and even physically eliminating, social and ecological diversity. Put bluntly, now, more than ever, geometrism poses the risk of producing a relatively lifeless and ultimately unliveable world. The thesis proceeds through four interrelated avenues of critique. The first concerns the historical and philosophical roots of geometrism, particularly within Plato’s Formal Doctrine and its profound influence on Western traditions. The second involves a socio-constructivist critique of abstraction, which challenges long-standing claims that mathematical knowledge is inherently universal, neutral, and a-temporal. Making geometry the principle of spatial organization in the real world is never, then, politically, ethically or ecologically neutral. This is demonstrated through the third aspect which considers the material and experiential consequences of geometrism as became manifest in different historical circumstances, specifically here, the Gardens of Versailles, and Le Corbusier’s architecture and urbanism. Finally, the thesis considers some alternative possibilities for overcoming geometrism, as found, for example, in the work of Henri Lefebvre, phenomenology, the Indigenous thought of Mohawk mathematician Edward Doolittle, and feminist thinkers Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. These reflections each, in their own ways, gesture toward modes of thought and practice less tethered to geometric fundamentalism.

Department dc:contributor.department

Environmental Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Aouamri, Yanis

Advisor dc:contributor.supervisor

• Michael, Smith

• Geometrism
• Environmental Philosophy
• Geometry
• Figuration
• Social Space
• Mathematical Platonism
• Versailles
• Le Corbusier
• Ancient Mathematics
• Socio-constructivist Mathematics
• Morbid Geometrism
• Abstraction
• Reification
• Phenomenology
• Technological Enframing
• Unliveable World

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1974/36423

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:queensu.scholaris.ca:1974/36423