Human laws are flexible, subject to repeal and renegotiation. The drinking age is 21 in the US, 18 in Britain, 16 in Cuba, “never” in Afghanistan, and “step right up” in Cambodia. Any country can stiffen or relax its drinking laws at a whim (and of course, the stiffer your drink and the laxer your laws, the more whim-prone you become). Geometry’s laws are not like that. There’s no wiggle room: no president to issue pardons, no jury to acquit, no officer to let you off with a warning. Math’s rules are self-enforcing, unbreakable by their nature.
Yet as we’ve seen, and shall see many times again, that’s not a bad thing. Restrictions birth creativity. The laws on what shapes can’t do come packaged with case studies illuminating what they can. In design projects ranging from sturdy buildings to useful paper to planet-destroying space stations, geometry inspires even as it constrains.
