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'Flatland' is amazing. Dimensions are the point of the tale. And the line, the square and the solid cube. (Sorry about being so oblique, but I often angle for a laugh at the beginning of a review, no matter how circuitous.)
The author Edwin Abbott Abbott with a wink and a smile introduces us to the science of geometry in the Victorian Age in this (a)cute story about A. Square. To understand the concepts that these surprisingly charming fantasy characters who live in a two-dimensional world illustrate, I think you need to be either good in math or be a high school graduate. Nevertheless, if you have some mathematics education, this is a fun read which becomes something bigger on the inside. But I was very dubious, initially and I was afraid of a something coincident with the most boring math class I'd ever taken and too much eccentricity.
I circled my living room going around and around (at least 360 degrees, I think). Do I want to read 'Flatland', even for a monthly book club selection? A Victorian Romance, equal to no less than 0 in my estimation, about math? But, a distant chord projected tangentially into my attempts to square the circle and I realized I had transcended my doubts. So, I reached a crossroads of sorts, an intersection in my thoughts. I devised a postulate for myself: I'm at a point between two directions - do I make a line towards the library, or use up valuable space on my Kindle downloading this book? Plus, I'm geometrically opposed to wasting my time. A pain, as if a ray was bisecting the plane of my forehead, warned me I was overthinking this. After all, an endpoint to reading is expanding my universe into different dimensions of ideas. I'd function on a higher plane, I mused.Read more ›
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I've read this book several times, and just decided to try the annotated version. Found the huge number of annotations distracting and way beyond my math knowledge. For the person who really like this sort of background analysis, it is fine. For those of us generalists, it's a bit overwhelming.
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Flatland is a novel originally published in 1884 by Edwin A. Abbott. It is told from the point of view of A. Square, that four-sided resident of the titular country. The first part of the book consists of a description of what it is like to live in a two-dimensional world. The second part concerns A. Square's encounter with a sphere and his subsequent "visions" of pointland, lineland and spaceland. The purpose of this novel is two-fold: to introduce the casual reader into the concepts of multi-dimensional spaces (i.e. what will become the concept of four dimensional space-time) and to provide social commentary on Victorian society. I cannot comment much on what he achieves in terms of opening the eyes of the Victorian reader to the ills of that society; however, I find his ability to illuminate the concepts of dimensionality extra-ordinary. As a math and physics teacher, I am always looking for ways to open my students' minds to visualizing what they are doing. Even after well over 100 years, few people have approached Abbott's clarity in helping people visualize the difference between different dimensions. One of the best examples: a square only "looks" like a square to someone who can see in three dimensions. A square itself, trapped in a plane, would see another square (or, indeed, any figure) only as a line. This leads to intriguing thoughts on what creatures who live in higher dimensions than our own see as they look at us. Of course, the story of Flatland alone is wonderful but Stewart's annotation and commentary take the book to another level. On nearly every page, Stewart offers insight and background into the text. Unable to resist the pun: he added another dimension to the book. Having read Flatland many years ago and enjoyed it, I felt I understood the book much better this time around with Stewart's help. Anyone with an interest in math and physics should not pass up the opportunity to read this edition of Flatland.
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The core story of Flatland is certainly starting to show signs of its age, but Ian Stewart does a phenomenal job of reviving the relevance of Flatland and it's inhabitants. Stewart does an excellent job of providing both historical context as well as discussing how Abbott's ideas foreshadowed, predicted, or influenced modern mathematical developments. The mathematics and analogy Abbott and Stewart use are equally useful to the mathematically inept and the mathematically adept. Entertaining and educational.
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With the Alice in Wonderland books, the late 1800s seem to have been the time for really creative mathemetical writing.
Although not as frequently read, Flatland, the Edwin Abbott Abbott story of a little square coming to understanding that higher dimensions do indeed exist outside his world is a delightful read. For those seeking to understand what life is like in other dimensions, Flatland is very comprehensible with clear writing and simple, easy to understand illustrations that help drive home Abbott's points.
Originally written with many sly references to the then existing state of British culture, Abbott's invitation to try and understand higher dimensions was also an invitation to society of his time to try to re think its views on a myriad of issues...including its openness to women in education.
In this way, Abbott converted viewing higher dimensions into both a mathematical and social challenge...points Stewart was sensitive to in his annotations and his own homage, Flatterland.
Although other editions of this work exist, the annotated Flatland is the one to buy both because of its faithful reproduction of the original and its thought provoking and helpful footnotes that give the work broader meaning.
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This item: The Annotated Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
