Finding Myself in Flatland

Sphere to Square: Now, Sir; listen to me. You are living on a Plane. What you style Flatland is the vast level surface of what I may call a fluid, on, or in, the top of which you and your countrymen move about, without rising above it or falling below it. I am not a plane Figure, but a Solid. ~Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

I finally did it! I read this 1884 satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, a book that my aunt told me about when I lived with her...oh, I suppose it was nearly 35 years ago. She was going to college then and it was required for one of her classes. Although I had not read it, she gave me a detailed description of it so it was almost as if I had read it. Still, I have never forgotten her unique perspective on this book.

Now one might ask me why I would bother reading a book about a square, who believes the whole universe is only on his plane of two dimensions, as does everyone else in Flatland. Yes, I like books that foster deeper thinking and I like sci-fi and I like math, so this should be a book I would enjoy at some level, but I have to admit that the initial thought of actually reading about geometric figures living on a plane just sounded...boring.

Actually, it has some points that are quite entertaining, "points" being quite relative to the story actually. First, there is a strange preoccupation with symmetry in each geometric figure and sharpness of angles. Then the more sides a being had, the higher his place in society with those who were like circles (because there were no perfect circles but only polygons with so many small sides that they seem like circle) being as priests. Of course, without the ability to look from above, everyone looks like a line so one must learn to determine shapes by feeling or an elaborate way of recognizing by sight only taught to those of the right number of sides. However, the most comical part was about the women, who were only uneducated and ill-tempered lines with a sublime ability to kill anyone merely by approaching them with their needle sharpness or being walked into because they were so difficult to see being a mere dot at certain angle, suggesting it was thought up by a man with curiously disconcerting wit, if you get my point....

Then a sphere interacts by placing a part of his body in Flatland, thusly:

Our little square then is quite puzzled as to how this obviously higher being could disappear and reappear, because of some alien concept he tried to explain called "height." All the sphere had to do was rise above or below Flatland, so he could not be seen by the Flatlanders but still could be heard. Oh, and when the sphere was above Flatland, he could see everything like into houses, into safes, and even the insides of any Flatlander's body! Very weird stuff. Then imagine, if you can, the sickening feeling of being out of control and not knowing what is happening when the square is pulled up above Flatland by the sphere!

My aunt, a rather devout Christian woman, saw a correspondence in the Flatlanders' limitation of two dimensions and our limitation of three. She associated angels as beings of another dimension that we do not see, but they can easily enter our plane of existence, so to speak, and leave it as well. You will not find angels mentioned in the book itself, but the possibility of other dimensions and beings existing in them is more than suggested. I do remember how much my aunt's perspective, based on this book, shaped how I thought of angels from that time on.

~ My Lord, what a joy it is to be able to see You in everything, even what we cannot yet see. I await with anticipation to see more. ~