"1. Of the Nature of Flatland; 4. Concerning the Women; 5. Of Our Methods of Recognizing One Another; 14. How I Vainly Tried to Explain the Nature of Flatland; 15. Concerning a Stranger from Spaceland; 16. How the Stranger Vainly Endeavored to Reveal to Me in Words the Mysteries of Spaceland." Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. New York: Dover [1884], 1952. 3-5; 12-22; 59-77. http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/
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First I think Abott has a unique way of writing and thinking. His thoughts are things that I've heard, read, or thought about before but somehow Abott describes them in a different slightly unusual way. For example in part 1 he talks about perspective of different shapes. This is common sense but for some reason he gives you a different view on perception of objects. It's kind of odd to me that Abott builds this whole new world based on Flatland, like women are straight lines. the houses have no windows but yet if you read farther into the article the reasoning behind Flatland seems to all come together and make sense. According to Abott there are many dimensions and directions and they all may be perceived differently but yet they all lead to truth and are recognizable.
ReplyDeleteI think that Abott's article is based on dimensions and the article allows you to perceive the difference and similarities between them just like Abott states in the quote below. Abott writes "Whenever you open your eyes, you see a Plane (which is of Two Dimensions) and you infer a Solid (which is of Three); but in reality you also see (though you do not recognize) a Fourth Dimension, which is not colour nor brightness nor anything of the kind, but a true Dimension..."
While reading this I found it very odd when Abbot talked about houses many years ago only being able to be square if the town they lived in was less than 10,000 in population. I also found it interestign when he was talking about different classes, women, men and soldiers being different shapes...He says that woman are straight lines, soldiers and lower classes of workmen are triangles with two equal sides that are about 11 inches long. The middle class are equalateral triangle, and professional men and gentlemen are squares.
ReplyDeleteAbbot talks about how women and men have different doors they shall enter into their houses and how if a women has any sort or cold or disease that they will be destroyed.
I found this reading very intereresting. At first I was confused on what he was actually talking about. But as I got more into the reading I realized he was talking about an actual place.
I thought Abbot's was a creative take on perspective and categorizing them into imaginary lands. What really stuck out to me tho was when Abbot spoke of looking at shapes from different dimensions. As an example he said that a penny viewed from the top was a circle, bring your eye level further down and its an oval continue until you are eye level with it and it is basically a line, like one simple object transformed itself as you moved around it. In theory our own Earth could be flat in some dimension.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting point brought up by shapes was the class of the people in Flatland. The higher the class you maty be the more sides you contain. Although a woman was viewed as a simple straight line, Abbot still warned that she could be dangerous, becoming a needle to pierce the other shapes or even becoming invisible.
I thought this was a very different reading because of the two dimensions. Abbot’s creative was on perspective and categorizing them into a fantasyland. He also thinks a bit different from me because of his ideas are weird and how he thinks of perspectives of shapes. For example the dimensions, like a penny being viewed from the top was a circle but if you putt your eye level down you see it is an oval. It is kind of like the penny is being transformed but really its not. I found this interesting that when Abbot talked about a different classes, women men, and soldier being different shapes because women have straight lines, soldiers and lower classes of workingmen are triangles with two equal sides.
ReplyDeleteI did not enjoy this reading very much. I felt that the part about the women, cast system, and the sons' houses having one more side than the fathers' to be ridiculous. The only part I allowed myself to wrap my brain around was the different perspectives of the penny. I have to admit that I did not read the article in its entirety and maybe I will challenge myself to finish it, to allow this article to change my opinion of it. However, I did feel that it was a tad bit nonsensical and a lot of romantic drivel. When it comes to matters of mathematics I like to keep the theories short and to the point.
ReplyDeleteI thought this reading was a bit confusing yet interesting at the same time. I thought it was pretty fascinating the way that Abbott described things in terms of geometry. An exaample would be the penny which he described as being characterized as a circle, oval, and eventually a line depending on how you look at it. He even compared people; men and women as being characterized as shapes, specifically, women as straight lines. Although interesting, I did not particularly enjoy this section of the reading because pennies are one thing, but people are another and it seems sort of close-minded for lack of a better word to characterize people in the way which Abbott does so easily. Aside from this, I think Abbott had a lot of interesting theories and ideas about mathematics and comparisons elements of everyday life.
ReplyDeletei found this article very confusing. A flat world would be extremely boring, with no room for individuality. Every character is in it's own group and must remain there without a chance to move forward. Also, the part where you would have to look at the planes from ground level would make it difficult to even recognize what it is we're looking at. I don't really like flat land; I need some sort of dimension.
ReplyDeleteThe article was confusing I agree with nidah but after watching the movie made the point abbott made about differenttating classes based on their shape more realistic. The idea of the shapes being "people" and having different classes and reasons for being that shape is a lot like the system of everyday life. Interesting that the middle class was defined as equal sided trangles and the higher the class the more sides you get. True in any society I suppose.
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