Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
It is a classical result of mathematics that there is an intimate connection between linear algebra and projective or affine geometry. Thus, many algebraic results can be given a geometric interpretation, and geometric theorems can quite often be proved more easily by algebraic methods. In this paper we apply topological ideas to geometric lattices, structures which provide the framework for the study of abstract linear independence, and obtain affine geometry from the mappings that preserve the closure operator that is associated with these lattices. These mappings are closely connected with semi-linear transformations on a vector space, and thus linear algebra and affine geometry are derived from the study of a certain closure operator and mappings which preserve it, even if the “space” is finite.