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What books should everyone read before they die?Add Book
Flatland
Edwin A. Abbott
Literature
James Mustich
Aug 9, 2018
A novel of mathematical whimsy, Flatland is set in the peculiar world that provides the book’s name and is home to its putative author, A. Square, a two-dimensional being in a world inhabited by lines, triangles, circles, and polygons. Ingeniously composed as a kind of dystopian memoir, Flatland is a stunning piece of social satire, depicting with great acuity the gender and class distinctions of Victorian Britain. Abbott’s notions about the larger conundrums posed by different dimensions and their relationships to one another were ahead of their time, mathematically speaking, but the enduring fascination of his fable is its depiction of the perils of making the world simpler than it is, no matter how elegantly provable that simplicity may seem.
Surprised by how funny and still relevant this was.
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A wonderful way to explain upward mobility and classicism
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A short novel illustrating the wisdom of recognizing that there are valid perspectives other than our own, limited, ones. Kinda makes you think more about how a fourth dimension would be perceived by those able to experience it.
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Important for encouraging different angles of observation
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This is a fun and excellent exercise in how to visualize Euclidean space. Ian Stewart's Annotated Flatland is definitive.
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Will never forget Carl Sagan's use of this book in Cosmos. Best advertisement ever :-)
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A quirky, but cleverly written and geometrically entertaining book about the structures of society.
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I couldn't even finish it! I just found the prose so dry and unfocused, I never wanted to pick it back up after I put it down.
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Flatland, written by Edwin Abbott Abbott (seriously), is a novella written in the 1st person by a resident of a two-dimensional world who becomes aware of and visits different dimensions, from the 0 dimension up to the 3rd. The satirical aspects are the most commented on part by most people, as Abbott uses the detailed description of Flatland to mock the deeply entrenched social castes of Victorian England, but what I found more interesting was that Abbott - who was among other things a respected theologian - seems to be jeering (or at least questioning) several traditional aspects of Christian doctrine along with colonialism. Two things in particular stand out: First, the determined efforts of the "Spacelanders" (3rd dimension people) to make the Flatlanders understand the reality of the 3rd dimension is a clear analogy for colonialism generally and maybe specifically the pathological missionary efforts of men like William Carey. It can't be a coincidence that these efforts in the book end largely in disaster. Second, and more interesting is the brief section where the narrator visits the 0th(?) dimension and sees a being whose entire universe is just the single point that is himself. This being sings happily about the complete and unending joy that the totality of his existence affords him. It's hard to imagine a man with Abbott's theological background mirroring some traditional Christian language about God's self-opinion that closely by accident. In the story the characters ridicule the singularity's idiocy and move on. Bit cheeky really.
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Wow... how was this written so long ago? Talk about holding up.
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I appreciated this as an 8-year-old for the pure wonder it provoked. My appreciation grew richer as I grew older.
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Despite rather ugly sexism in the second half, this one has some cool ideas for thinking about spatial perspectives.
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I thought I was going to read a whimsical story that teased out a way to envision dimensions greater than three. What I got was far more interesting in the world as I thought I knew it.
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Fascinating thought experiment with powerful philosophical ramifications.
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Such a wondrously imaginative book! No spoilers, but it's a proper curveball that'll have you smiling all the way!
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I had been meaning to read this book for a long, long time. I think I got my Dover Thrift edition from Borders years ago. Ah, Borders. I miss having a big bookstore five minutes away.
I liked a lot about this book. The idea that our perceptions govern our lives is nothing really new, nor is the idea that someone with a different way of seeing the world could be persecuted by his peers, but the way Abbott presents 'enlightenment' (for lack of a better word) is fun. Getting schlorped up into a higher dimension by a 'superior' being and shown how things are past my limited ability to see reality would be terrifying but might be worth that terror for a little enlightenment.
I'm sure that there are lots of philosophical underpinnings in the book that I missed because I am too far away from my philosophy 101 class to remember things, but I found the book fun and rewarding anyway.
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