Book Description
Over a hundred years ago, Edwin Abbott Abbott wrote a
mathematical adventure set in a world on one plane, populated
by a hierarchical society of regular geometrical figures--who
think and speak and have all too human emotions. Since then
Flatland has fascinated generations of readers, becoming a
perennial science-fiction favorite. By imagining the contact
of beings from different dimensions, the author fully
exploited the power of the analogy between the limitations of
humans and those of his two-dimensional characters. A
first-rate fictional guide to the concepts of relativity and
multiple dimensions of space, the book also will appeal to
those who are interested in computer graphics. This field,
which literally makes higher dimensions seeable, has aroused
a new interest in visualization. We can now manipulate
objects in four dimensions and observe their three-
dimensional slices tumbling on the computer screen. But how
do we interpret these images? In his introduction to the
volume, Thomas Banchoff points out that there is no better
start on the problem of understanding higher-dimensional
slicing phenomena than reading this classic novel of the
Victorian era.