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A review by jobly
Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
2.0
A square living in the two-dimensional world of Flatland, explains how life and culture exist in only two planes and recounts the spiritual experience of encountering a being from three-dimensional space.
A fun read by an author who understood that the central conceit could only be stretched so far. This provides an interesting satirical view of the structures and mores of Victorian society, taking in gender politics, the class system, politics and religion along the way.
That said, given all the critical hype about this novella and its complex discussion of mathematics, it all seemed rather slight to me. Ideas of geometry and dimensions are played with engagingly enough, but ultimately they are not so much the subject of the work as a device through which to discuss spiritual ideas. Here maths becomes a way to justify the idea of God, and validate faith in something for which we cannot provide any scientific proof. As someone who has a great deal of faith in science and absolutely no belief in religion/spirituality I found this pretty hard to swallow.
A fun read by an author who understood that the central conceit could only be stretched so far. This provides an interesting satirical view of the structures and mores of Victorian society, taking in gender politics, the class system, politics and religion along the way.
That said, given all the critical hype about this novella and its complex discussion of mathematics, it all seemed rather slight to me. Ideas of geometry and dimensions are played with engagingly enough, but ultimately they are not so much the subject of the work as a device through which to discuss spiritual ideas. Here maths becomes a way to justify the idea of God, and validate faith in something for which we cannot provide any scientific proof. As someone who has a great deal of faith in science and absolutely no belief in religion/spirituality I found this pretty hard to swallow.