It’s a good book. Not hugely profound or anything, but it’s a worthy fable and you can read it in a few hours.
i’m amused by all the people who haven’t read it but are more than happy to hop on Gamer’s hate-this-book bandwagon.
The other thing about the psychology of ILPers not yet mentioned in this thread is how they all like to feel as though they are too smart or too insightful to like and enjoy things that other people like and enjoy.
8===D - - O:
No an oxymoron is a mistake, just as this stupid book is a mistake.
If the book had been misrepresented in any way, I’d agree that you had a right to be amused. But there is nothing funny about ‘hating’ a stupid idea.
It’s a simple quick read. But it is not good or worthy.
Why do you think it’s either of these things?
Shrugging and posturingly level-headed summations like yours irk me in any situation. But pairing it with the subject of flatland is glorious exponential in the irksomeness of the matter.
… (I wrote something re-affirming but trite, so decided to scratch it) sorry.
i couldn’t care less if what i said irks you.
No, it’s not a great work of philosophy, but neither are most entertaining, poignant tales. What is ridiculous (and tiresome) is your rejection of a book because its message doesn’t sufficiently account for the philosophical contributions of Wittgenstein. Frankly, my impression is that yours is a knee jerk reaction based in resentment over the fact that the author of Flatland has something to say that resonates more with other people than whatever your chosen favorite philosophers say, but i admit i could be wrong given that i know almost nothing about you.
It’s been a while since i read it, but the two major things i remember about it are 1) that i enjoyed it, and 2) the political message behind it, which rings true to most people aware of how the process of social subjugation unfolds in the world. i also recall it as being imaginative and fantastic in a thoughtful way. i recommend it to people who are thoughtful, but also enjoy reading things which aren’t serious works of philosophy.
A sphere, to a flat creature can only look like a line.
No a “flat creature” can see nothing at all. It can’t exist except in the imagination. A sphere cannot reflect light to a 2d creature, a beam of light has to have a third dimension to travel along. And “seeing” requires reflection of light.
There are only rules to multiple dimensions because someone built a axiomatic structure to the rules: they are logically derived, but not empirically verified. In otherwards, its made up bullshit, that happens to follows the inner mechanics of how our own imagination works. If were verifying anything with dimensions, dark matter, superstring theories, time travel, its how our imagination links up with processing centers of the mind that compute multiplicities, unknown quantities and qualities, competing theories that verge metrically in convergence in time, cause & effect, and how it all relates to essential things, such as toasters, Larry, bicycles, mountains, supernova, hangnail, etc.
Cicero researched this in his investigations on mnemonics.
Flatland does go by its own set of geometric rules, and how euclidian geometry should interact with other dimensions. It was written at the end of the 19th century, for school children. Young children. Lev here appears to be struggling with a sphere passing through a plane, from the perspective of a flatlander, much as it was described in the book to the astonishment of the second dimensional creature. Lev therefore, it can be safely deduced, has the intellectual depth and curiosity of a Victorian era young school child- essentially this book was written for him, and other young Oliver Twists out there. This very resistance against thinking of alternatives that Lev demonstrates is the actual sim of the book. Its goal is to make such people into thinkers of ideas and concepts they never before considered.
It is a good introduction to any child, as it encourages what Jung called Active Imagination. It causes a lot of technical information to merge with our ability to compute multiplicities and mixed rule systems. It introduces us to Ontological and Epistemological Paradox’s involving space, which even our most advanced theories of Space and the Universe each confront. Take for example my favorite paradox, the Tardski-Banach Paradox.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach–Tarski_paradox
Its a system that runs clearly into the old Pythagorean and Zenonian Paradoxes referencing Size and Metrics. Yet, in social mnemonics… How our brain literally processes space, including its contradictions and paradoxes, this is expected and to be sought out, digested, understood, and utilized in its nuances, just as Cicero advocated. Our imagination isn’t rule based, but has hardware issues that make it poorly reflective of our apperceptional assumption of what the perceivable would should be like; it is not rules, but externally derived rules are expected to apply within it, and we rarely notice the inconsistencies in our imaginative architecture when it doesn’t. We can imagine infinity, but hardly can visualize it… at best, its a fractal assumption using visual cues, and abstract assumptions that it will go on forever, but it really doesn’t.
Flatland, and its many sequals written by many up to the present, introduces young thinkers to such ways of thinking, using a storyline young children, or guys who ride the short bus to sheltered workshops for the mentally disabled like Lev, can explore and test themselves with.
If you haven’t hit puberty yet, or if you think Nietzsche is the whole of philosophy, or spend all your time preaching about Atheism on philosophy forums to the choir of discontents , then I recommend this book to you, as it holds the potential of unlocking your imagination for the first time, and challenge you to ponder new ideas in novel ways. Its the advisable step for one interested in learning more about how they think, inquire, and how to utilize your various thinking abilities WITHIN your imagination. As very few people on this forum are imaginative, quite idiotic actually, I strongly recommend a total cessation in posting on this site until you have read this Gulliver travels genre book. You can go further and read some other books as well. I recommend reading books in philosophy. I know very few people here like to read such books, preferring to mouth breathe and talk about banal nonsense that has jack shit to do with nothing, but I strongly suggest you all try. Books… Get your read on, Bitches.
Duh, no. I’m not struggling at all. You are the one that is having difficulties.
The rules of logic demand that a 2D object cannot perceive anything. Without a third dimension such perception is impossible.
An observer can imagine a sphere crossing a virtual 2d plane and “see” a series of circles that start small grow to the point of equator, then diminish, and disappear.
The reason that Flatland is ridiculous in its own logical terms, and why you are stupid for promoting this fallacy is that the objects cannor see down the plane without a third dimension.
In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anything of what you call a “solid” kind; but I dare say you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight the Triangles, Squares, and other figures, moving about as I have described them. On the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind, not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another. Nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us, except Straight Lines; and the necessity of this I will speedily demonstrate.
Tell me how could “we” see even a straight line?
To demonstrate to the reader, how these straight lines can be observed Abbott suggests we get a penny and lower our eyes to the edge of the table upon which it sits.
Well DUH, a penny has thickness: 3 dimensions. That is how we are able to view it. And so on the first page Mr Edwin Abbott abbott shoots himself in the foot, with an error even a Victorian schoolboy would snigger at.
Lev is right, as far as I can see. It is impossible to imagine something with only 2 dimensions. This is because all of our modes of perception rely on objects being 3 dimensional. There is little point trying to conceive on what is inconceivable. As soon as you start to conceive of anything, you have necessarily started thinking in three dimensions.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
How about instead of looking at that look at sheet of onion skin paper laying on the table, straight on 180 degrees ? Could You Say the same thing about it?
M
Orb I think that’s the way to see 2D. I think everything we think we see is actually 2 D in our minds. A flat screen. Our Phaneron, if you dare to really see it — and I have done this and do NOT recommend it — is a flat screen that only we see. We are trapped in it and suspended, as if inside a sphere that rotates around us, and we move around like a hamster in a ball. So in a way, we live in flatland already. For this to change, it’s beyond me. I can’t conceive of the mind that wouldn’t suffer the same limits. If we are to pass through flat and unflat dimensions, it’s possible we do so existentially, or subjectively, depending on how we are aware of the fabric of existence. This awareness changes.
Again I criticize flatland for its lack of any useful truth value. I turn to it looking for wisdom and i get gimmickry and the vague sense it thinks it’s smarter than me and telling me something about how foolish I am without knowing it.
Maybe it’s brilliant.
In this situation, I believe you are imagining a 3D object, but one where you can only see two dimensions out of the three dimensions the object has. In this case, of course, the object is easy to imagine.
If the object had no depth, it would not appear like a flat screen. It would not ‘appear’ at all. There would be nothing to reflect any light or give you any other hint as to its existence. I therefore stand by the statement that a 2D object is unimaginable.
Brevet,
The mere fact that it does appear, means that it’s appearance has a purpose an intention. It is not perfectly 0 degrees, and it’s being ness is factored into its appearance. This factor is then discounted by the mind, and depth is compensated for by this.
Therefore, the line has to be crossed between the idea of two dimensional its, and it’s appearent limits of apprehension.
In other words, the mere appearance of an almost two dimensional object rests in an ultimate reduction
the mathelogocally reduced object to its near logical limit.
That such an ultimately result Ed object can not be further reduced, implies in the idea of the limits ideal objects. However it does not contraindicated the idea of two dimensionality, since, given a very good instrument capable of perceiving thicknesses of atomic length, it still can said to have a spoken of volume. But the appearance we are talking about, is one where the eye has no magnification to reduce perception to such a level.
Gamer,
maybe the brilliancy rests in the limits or boundaries between the existential or subjective phenomena, and it’s ultimate reduction and bracketing. And the question arises, as to whether this boundary can ever be transversed do, or in other words transcended.
My feeling is that it can, but only verified by extremely developed senses of perception, not quite
readily available , methodologically.