Customer Reviews

Flatland/Sphereland

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a must read for anyone. Its written simply for anyone to understand yet the underlying principles can inspire thought and contemplation on the ideas of relativity and perspective. On the surface this book explores dimensions but it provokes thought about perspective and encourages you to evaluate your own perspectives. You can get anywhere from mild amusement from this book to philosophical life changing perspectives.

In detail, Flatland is a classic story about a two dimensional square that discovers the world of a line, a point, a sphere and beyond. The square contemplates his role in society as a square and realizes that there is something else out there when a sphere comes to visit.

Flatland and Sphereland are very well written books, but for entirely different reasons. Flatland is a fun story that takes you into the 2nd (and 1st, and 0th) dimensions to see what life is like there with its final goal to make you speculate on what the fourth dimension would be like. Flatland, the first book, excels at making you grasp the concepts and has a very good story to go along with it. The story seems to be the main focus, rather than the other aspects.

Sphereland is entirely the opposite. Sphereland deals with ideas such as the expanding universe theory others. This it explains even clearer then flatland did. But Sphereland's focus was not on the story, but rather on the theories that it tried to convey. This may be a good thing in some people's minds, but I enjoyed the story of flatland and didn't like it pushed aside to explain the theories. I also didn't like the fixing of flatland to make it less backwards (Besides giving equality to women) since flatland to me was backwards.

So If you want to learn complex Ideas simply and with fun, these are the books for you.

This was a good morsel in the midst of my newest interests...chaos, quantum mechanics, sacred geometry, etc...if you enjoy numbers and thinking hard - it is a good read. Reading for everyday pleasure may be disappointing.

Abbott's math fantasy Flatland is more than 120 years old, and that alone makes it an interesting reading for people interested in geometry. Written in a time before the age of relativity and quantum mechanics, Flatland explores a two-dimensional world inhabited by geometrical shapes.
The math is pretty easy and people with a solid math background won't learn anything new, but Flatland is still interesting. Not so much the story, which is about A. Square's (main character) introduction to a third dimension by a character called Sphere.
Besides the math, the sociogram of the Victorian times are amusing. Soldiers are considered to be very dull people, but still worse are women, who have no brains and memory whatsoever. I read somewhere that Abbott wanted to satirize the sexism of the times, but that is not so obvious while reading the book.
The book is followed by Burger's Sphereland, a sequel written 80 years later. Sphereland explored further the mysteries of Flatland. Women have brains now, but they still don't have much to say, and have to behave like good housewives. Burger should have known better, but 1960 was still some years before Women's Lib...
Could have been a lot more interesting if there were no characters but just plain math and more illustrations. For people who want to understand how Universes expand and to get a more realistic view about dimensions, I suggest to read Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History Of Time'.

Most reader-reviewers were equally amazed on first reading Abbott's Flatland. But the point of the book is lost within all the excited verbiage. The point Abbott attempted was to show one's physical world (in however many dimensions) need not limit one's view of such world. The point was partially spoiled by lifting A Square out of his Flatland into Sphereland where A Square then magically developed the 3-D vision that real humans come equipped with. This should not have been the case--Square's vision should have remained the same as it was in Flatland. The main aspect of the Flatland story is that the brain is able to supersede information presented to it by the crude senses. Square was willing to go to prison to stay loyal to his intellectual knowledge. His Flatland jailers would always stay true to their visual sense data.

The illustrations for zero, one and two dimensions are now a bit outmoded. With string theory the little one dimensional loops of vibrating energy (said to compose the zoo of sub-atomic particles) are woven together to produce not only the second and third dimension but also the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th dimensions. Alas, there is no theory to support Abbott's Pointland of zero dimensions--this sounds like a spiritual concept. A modern day Abbott is needed to elucidate string theory for the man on the street.

The two dreams A Square had, revealing the narrowness of the perspectives in Lineland and Pointland, were the most interesting part of the story. As he slept A Square's brain was in contact with the Matrix Data Base that showed him how adamantly the inhabitants of Lineland and Pointland clung to their simple perspectives. Thus, A Square saw the futility of maintaining his Flatland point of view.

If you are not familiar with Edwin Abbott's "Flatland", this is the edition to buy. If you are familiar with it (but presumably do not yet own it), this is still the edition to buy.

You've heard the classic criticism of a story is that it is "two dimensional". Well, Edwin Abbott's tale of an imaginary two-dimensional land adds a whole new twist to that phrase. Flatland, as he describes it, is about as rich as a two-dimensional story can be. And it is marvelously extended by its narrator's encounters with the unknown - the world of 3 dimensions. The challenges that narrator faces as he encounters the incomprehensible, quite closely mirror mine whenever I attempt to think about a 4th (or 5th or 7th) dimension. If you've faced the same struggle, you will be delighted by this book.

If you've ever wondered what a 4th dimension would look like, Flatland provides a lens through which you can imagine that extension of our 3D world. From here you can go on to read Rudy Rucker or Pickover or Hawkins - but this is the place to start your exploration of dimensions beyond experience. Abbot accomplishes this by describing the eye-opening extension of his narrator's 2D world when visited by a 3D apparition, a "sphere". His framing of the foundational issues through the experiences of what you'd expect to be the least interesting character in fiction are really quite engaging. The storyline, however sparse, is as interesting as the mathematics - albeit quite nineteenth-century'ish in tone.

Don't misconstrue Abbott's seemingly misogynist portrayal of women and of his class-stratified society. This element was intended to provide a third layer of sharp, Swiftian satire and critical commentary on the rigid social mores of his era. Abbot succeeds in this (but I, nevertheless, decided not to read it aloud to my 6th grade classes - worrying that they might not be attuned to this subtlety of tone.) Be forewarned.

The neat twist of this edition, the inclusion of Dionys Burger's 1983 "Sphereland", as an upside-down "second book", is quite a nice touch. Although I did not find Burger's stylings quite as engaging as those of Abbott, his extension of the mathematical ideas into non-Euclidian spaces is a nice introduction to that idea for non-mathematicians. Since it was intended as a standalone book, "Sphereland" commences with a detailed review of the "Flatland" story. This can be skipped without loss but is not a substitute for reading the original "Flatland", here, first.

Flatland is a timeless classic; a great book for the mathematician and non-mathematician alike.

Many topics in modern physics and astronomy involve thinking of the universe in more than our customary three dimensions. Super-string theories, for instance, suggest as many as ten dimensions in our universe. Yet the general public is completely unfamiliar with this mode of thinking. Flatland and Sphereland are both stories with the perfect blend of simplicity and sophistication. Their simple, precise language is easy enough for even the casual reader to follow, yet the concepts presented are advanced enough that even experts in the field will be churning it around in their minds for days after. When I ordered these books, I expected an entertaining story that, while intriguing, would contribute little to my education in the long run. What I found, beneath the delightful tale, was a depth of concept that has changed my thinking.

Flatland is an excellent pseudo-fiction written to enlighten the reader as to the interactions between the dimensions. The escapades of the squares, lines, circles and triangles as they live their lives in only two dimensions and encounter both 'lower' and 'higher' dimensions is very illuminating as to how different dimensions work together, and how it is not possible for someone of a lower dimension to perceive the higher dimensions.

I especially enjoyed Sphereland (which is at the other end of the book, flipped over in a somewhat corny configuration) because of the added thought and depth it brought to the interactions between the sphere and the squares that were being observed in flatland. It is the original introduction of the sphere that leads the enhabitants of the two-dimensional world to ponder the third dimension, and it is this further discussion of the three dimensional world that allows us to ponder what lies out in the fourth dimension. The second book does a very good job of answering a lot of the questions raised in Flatland, as well as bringing up many other curious items (such as the 'flipping' of the dogs and what flipping would entail in a three dimensional world). Sphereland does a good job of walking the reader through the initial set up of Flatland, so if one is reading them back to back there is a lot of initial material that can be skimmed or skipped. I would recommend that you can go straight to sphereland and not miss a beat.

I did think that the emphasis placed on the 'backwardness' of the Victorian thinking two dimensional universe was a little much, but understand it was part of the times. It would have been nicer had the author of Sphereland merely skipped over its presence, rather than trying to set things straight through some kind of cultural revolution.

All in all, this is a very good book that leads to some very serious thinking - I would recommend it to everyone, regardless of their interest in science and math.

Flatland is one of my favorite books of all time. It's one of those stories I've been searching for all my life... A tale of multiple dimensions, written with captivating style. Dionys Burger's sequel lacks Abbot's elegance and sense of adventure, and seems lackluster compared to the original. "Out of your plane you go! Once, twice, thrice! 'Tis done!" Flatland is a fabulous realm, and I only regret that I cannot draw illustrations for it... They'd look like mere diagrams from a geometry text!

I am 17, and I thought that these books opened doors to a new way of thinking for me. It is very likely that anyone who didn't like these books simply did not understand them. Yes, the language was very wordy compared to modern literature, but no more difficult to understand than *Sherlock Homes* or Charles Dickens. I recomend this book to anyone who is scared of physics or simply wants too expand their mind.