Abstract
THESE plane people live on the edge of a disc which is their world. A third dimension exists only in their mathematies. Their astronomers find that a catastrophe will certainly happen. One cranky philosopher believes that there is a third dimension, and shows a scared people how their world may be tilted and the catastrophe averted. The author's characters, act and make love much like three-dimensional people, and they talk of a higher dimension just as Mr. Hinton would himself talk, of a fourth dimension. There never was an allegory, not even that of Bunyan, which was consistent with itself for one chapter, but Mr. Hinton's is more inconsistent with itself than any other allegory we have seen.
An Episode of Flatland, or How a Plane Folk discovered the Third Dimension, to which is added An Outline of the History of Unaea.
By C. H. Hinton. Pp 181. (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., Ltd.)
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P., J. An Episode of Flatland, or How a Plane Folk discovered the Third Dimension, to which is added An Outline of the History of Unaea . Nature 76, 246 (1907). https://doi.org/10.1038/076246b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/076246b0