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Loading... Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensionsby Edwin A. Abbott
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  dark_phoenix54 | Nov 20, 2009 |  Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a great little book by Edwin Abbott. Flatland is a mathematical adventure on geometry. It takes place on a two-dimensional world with a strict hierarchical society based on the shape of its individuals and it describes the consequences of the adventure of one of those individuals (a square) through the realms of three-dimensions. It's a great book that makes us think about more-than-three-dimensional spaces and objects through analogy with two- and one- and even zero-dimensional worlds. As I read this, I thought it would be interesting to see an animation version of this book, but it turns out there are already some movies on Flatland. There is even a recent one with Martin Sheen (voice). (  ) jorgecardoso | Oct 31, 2009 | This is a truly excellent book. It gave me a whole new outlook on multiple dimensions. ( )1  melydia | Oct 28, 2009 | The first part of this book, where the specifics of life in Flatland are explained, is boring and a bit awkward. It does give "life" to the inhabitants of that flat world and perhaps the rest of the book wouldn't be as captivating without it, but it feels like a kid ranting on about his cool new fantasy. Or perhaps I'm too informed in math to be thrilled by it. Actually I was disappointed by the "fog", I was expecting some motion-related means of identification. What strikes out from the description is of course the stiff class society. The idea of relating world views and actual worlds is great. I mean, how can one make a better point of someone's narrow-mindedness than exposing him to an infinitely larger world. The sphere refusing to understand or accept the possibility of higher dimensions is also a very strong scene. It can be viewed as a student questioning his mentor, who becomes aggressive, or as a reminder that although one has a reason to criticize another society, one's own is not perfect. (  ) jmattas | Sep 4, 2009 | Who thought that Euclidean Geometry could be so much fun? This is a book that I have read many times since I first read it in the 9th grade; when we believed it was an esoteric work whose real meaning was about the reality of life in other dimensions. I even found myself in a long discussion with a retired Air Force colonel about the possibility and significance of multiple dimensions with multiple life-forms. The colonel was a kind and patient provocateur who gently brought me back to earth and in an almost Socratic manner helped me put the book and my thoughts about it in a more realistic perspective and one that was more in line with the intentions of the author. So, for me, the book is very special as it gave me a special friend who helped me through the many terrible things young boys with new-step fathers go through. (  ) millsge | Aug 30, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 048627263X, Paperback)Unless you're a mathematician, the chances of you reading any novels about geometry are probably slender. But if you read only two in your life, these are the ones. Taken together, they form a couple of accessible and charming explanations of geometry and physics for the curious non-mathematician. Flatland, which is also available under separate cover, was published in 1880 and imagines a two-dimensional world inhabited by sentient geometric shapes who think their planar world is all there is. But one Flatlander, a Square, discovers the existence of a third dimension and the limits of his world's assumptions about reality and comes to understand the confusing problem of higher dimensions. The book is also quite a funny satire on society and class distinctions of Victorian England. The further mathematical fantasy, Sphereland, published 60 years later, revisits the world of Flatland in time to explore the mind-bending theories created by Albert Einstein, whose work so completely altered the scientific understanding of space, time, and matter. Among Einstein's many challenges to common sense were the ideas of curved space, an expanding universe and the fact that light does not travel in a straight line. Without use of the mathematical formulae that bar most non-scientists from an understanding of Einstein's theories, Sphereland gives lay readers ways to start comprehending these confusing but fundamental questions of our reality.(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
The actual purpose of the book seems to be to get people’s heads around the idea of a 4th dimension. I’m not sure he accomplished that, but it was a good read and not dated by being over a hundred years old. (