Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimensions

Edwin A. Abbott

Basic Books

2008

248 páginas

8h 16m

ISBN-13: 9780465011230

Flatland is a unique, delightful satire that has charmed readers for over a century. Published in 1884 by the English clergyman and headmaster Edwin A. Abbott, it is the fanciful tale of A. Square, a two-dimensional being who is whisked away by a mysterious visitor to The Land of Three Dimensions, an experience that forever alters his worldview—just as the book altered the worldview of its Victorian readers with the then-radical idea of a fourth dimension.

Like Abbott's original text, Ian Stewart’s commentary takes readers on a strange and wonderful journey. With clarity and wit, Stewart illuminates Abbott’s numerous Victorian references, weaves in biographical information about Abbott and his intellectual circle, which included the novelist H.G. Wells and the mathematician George Boole, and traces the scientific evolution of geometric forms and dimensions.

Touching on such diverse topics as ancient Babylon, Karl Marx, Frankenstein, Mt. Everest, and phrenology. Stewart makes fascinating connections between Flatland and Edwin Abbott’s life and times. The result is a classic to rival Abbott’s own, and a book that will inspire and delight curious readers for generations to come.

Resenhas (7)

5 (Perfeito)

Upward, not Northward

Would it be amusing for one being to contemplate more than our usual three dimensions reality conjecture? Confined to a limited dimensionality, Abbott invite us to stretch our imagination in a multidimensional romance, when suddenly a visitor from the third dimension manifests itself in the two dimensional world, the Flatland.
If somehow we could behold the fourth dimension and expand our scope of reality, the inferred conjecture when in comparison that we so vainly try to synthesize and always end up with analogies could reveal itself poor, shadowy and not solid at all. Many eyes would indicate incredulity, calling it madness, hell, tricks by enchanters, when it’s just knowledge.
To paint a picture of a lesser dimension it’s quite easy when you live in a higher one, but when you invert the papers, it is by no means a simple matter. We can only speculate a direction in which we cannot look and even granting the facts, each individual explain them in different ways.
Hungry for empirical truths, the facts not yet discovered before us could be beneficial to our understanding. In a not so distant future, the exponencial terminal points conceit should not limit or spread fear in our miserable race. It should bring enlightenment and a greater hunger, a rebel spirit for the objective truth.

Link for the highlights: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1neFdhrTSzMknCQut7LlDxRxcz2YgCWlF/view?usp=sharing