Conceptual Engineering

An artist and a mathematician are discussing shapes. The artist connects three straight lines together on a piece of paper. “That’s a triangle”, he says, and the mathematician agrees. Then the artist goes to a globe and traces a longitude line due south from the North Pole to the equator, then traces the equator west for some distance and then due north on a different longitude line back to the North Pole. “That’s a triangle, too", he says. The mathematician disagrees. “