Have always loved this book...

books:


	• Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Dover Thrift Editions) Edwin A. Abbott Dover Publications, 1992 - 96 pages average customer review:based on 157 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Beware the USE of this story

In Flatland, we are reminded that it is hard to convince people of something, when they have no terms of reference with which to make sense of what we're saying. It is a great reminder to us that, when we are talking to people from other religions or belief systems, it will be very hard for them to understand us. We have to really bend over backwards to translate our message into something that they can latch onto and understand. Fine. But here is the problem: Today, people are using this film to convey a very different message. They try to leave the impression that anyone who disagrees with their agenda (political, environmental, gender, whatever) is (1) wrong, (2) too poorly armed to ever understand them, and (3) therefore not worth trying to reason with. The result of this line of "thought" is that they will simply have to impose their wisdom on the Others. This leads to having government health care, whether you want it or not; using politically correct language, whether your want to or not; for your own good! So, the only problem with the Flatland story is that it fails to remind us that most people who go against the crowd are simply wrong. Sure, everyone laughed at Einstein and he turned out to be right. But everyone also laughed at millions of clowns who were simply nuts. The idea that anyone who is different is therefore right, is wrong. The idea that there is no point in reasoning with your adversaries, is also wrong. Please read or watch this story and enjoy it, but when your boss says, "I want us all to see this film so that we have a common language ..." RUN!

for more information click here

Have always loved this book...

This has always been a favorite of mine, so I wanted to christen my kindle with it. I imagine most people who will buy it for the kindle have probably already read it. If you like a mixture of Gulliver's Travels, Geometry and social commentary, it is worth the small amount of money. Of course you can get it for free since it was written in the late 1800's, but the Gutenberg version doesn't have good diagrams - they are all ASCII. I couldn't find diagrams in the versions available on AMAZON except the Oxford World's Classics edition, so that is the one I recommend. The diagrams are important for the geometry aspect and are excellent in this version.

for more information click here

Free SF Reader

Flat is an exercise in science fiction geometry, if you like. It shows a denizen of a 2 dimensional world seeing what it would be like to exist in higher dimensions. An interesting mathematical and philosophical exercise. Some will definitely find this very odd, and rather quirky. If you don't know what a dimension means in this sense, give it a miss.

Flatland visited

Flatland: A Romance Of Many DimensionsThis is not the version I bougt, because that one was nott in the list. This is the same title and author and about the same price, so it is about the same book. It's an entertaining story about analogies between two and three dimensions mainly, to come to an idea to percieve four and more dimensions, although for me some ideas were new, I can't say that I can imagine 4 spacial dimensins now, a two dimensional square with four one dimensional line borders leeds via a three dimensional cube with six two dimensional square sides to a fourth dimensional "supercube", with eight cubes as borders and twelve cornerpoints, how I must imagine that is not clear. But the ideas and the story are original considering the time in which the book was written.

for more information click here

The Limits of Perception

My appreciation of mathematics came late in life, but it finally came. I have neither the aptitude nor the training to be a professional mathematician, but I like to spend a fair amount of time reading books on mathematics. A handful that I recommend are: Darrell Huff's _How to Lie With Statistics_ (1954); David Salsburg's _The Lady Tasting Tea_ (2001); Simon Singh's _The Code Book_ (1999); Robert Osserman's _Poetry of the Universe_ (1995); Reuben Hersh's _What is Mathematics, Really?_ (1997); Bryan Bunch's _The Kingdom of Infinite Number_ (2000); James Gleick's _Chaos: Making a New Science_ (1987); and Douglas R. Hofstater's _Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid_ (1979). The last is fairly stiff reading. But it is beautifully written; and if you read only a fraction of it, your perception of the world is likely to change.

All of which brings us to a Victorian gentleman who gave some attention to the nature of and the limits of our perceptions of the world. Edwin A. Abbott (1836--1926) was a Shakespearean scholar who also took honors in mathematics and theology. In 1884, he published a mathematical fantasy called _Flatland_. It is set largely in a two-dimensional world, populated by sentient lines and shapes. Most denizens appear as lines to one another, though the relative faintness of lines gives a clue to the nature of different shapes. There is a class system built on the relative complexity of shapes: women (Straight Lines), workers and laborers (Isosceles Triangles), the middle class (Equilateral Triangles), professional men and gentlemen (Squares and Pentagons), and the nobility (Hexagons and Many-sided Figures). There is some movement from class to class, but "a woman is always a woman". The houses are also two-dimensional, mostly pentagonal in shape. There is a kind of gravitational pull to the south so that the base of various shapes turn toward the south and their apex angles toward the north. The narrator, "A. Square," has accepted his world at face value. But one day, he encounters a shape that _seems_ to be circular but who _says_ that it is a sphere... And nothing is ever quite the same.

_Flatland_ quickly became a classic. Several sequels and companion stories to the novel were written over the years by other hands, but one of the best is that of Dionys Burger, a Dutch physicist. It was originally published in 1957 as _Bolland_ and was translated as _Sphereland_ in 1965. Burger's novel relates how the natives of Flatland discover that their land is really curved. They then discover the Einsteinian properties that it contains. Burger relates how triangles can become greater than 180 degrees, how mongrel dogs can become pedegreed through three-dimensional trickery, how a brave Line explorer defied the courts to reveal new truths about the nature of space, and what geometric fairy tales can reveal about the nature of the world.

I hear the dry thunder of voices of the Mathematically Challenged rolling across the Waste Land: "We could _never_ understand!" And I say unto you: "Oh, yes you can." You don't need advanced training in math to grasp the concepts-- and they are presented in a painless, charming, and entertaining manner. So read these books and be refreshed by the rain.

Burger's book modernizes _Flatland's_ portrayal of women (Straight Lines). Here is Abbot's treatment in his novel:

Nor must it be for a moment supposed that our Women are destitute of affection. But unfortunately the passion of the moment predominates, in the Frail Sex, over every other consideration. This is, of course, a necessity arising from their unfortunate conformation. For as they have no pretensions to an angle, being inferior in this respect to the very lowest of the Isosceles, they are consequently wholly devoid of brainpower, and have neither reflection, judgement nor forethought, and hardly any memory. (15)

In a foreward to the novel, Isaac Asimov asserts that Abbott "may have participated in these now-antiquated social views" (ix). Perhaps. But I think that Asimov misses an ironic bite in this passage. I suspect that Abbott was less blinded by the prejudices of his day than his narrator, A. Square. In Burger's book, women still are the bottom social class. But they are better educated, more responsible, and less hysterically emotional. The social classes in Burger's novel (which takes place some time after the action in _Flatland_) have become a bit more fluid.

I hesitate to recommend a book because it is good for other people. That sort of praise is the kiss of death as far as most readers are concerned. But sometimes you just can't avoid mentioning that characteristic. These two fantasies are good for you. But they are also great fun. There is not a stuffy bone in either one of these beasts.

for more information click here

reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

recommendations

Everything Is Spiritual Reading List
My Top 10 Most Favorite Books
Epiography of *The Steppe*
Math Books
flatland

search for books
a romance of, dimensions, dover, editions, flatland, many, romance, thrift

Impressum / about us