In the spirit of Joseph’s email tales, here’s an exchange I had this afternoon with a Catholic mother.
Our 14 year old daughter’s English class is going to read and thoroughly discuss “Flatland” by Abbott. … I have read the reviews from Wikipedia and tried to find out more indepth from a Catholic Christian perspective if there is any content in that book that undermines our Catholic beliefs?
Dear Mrs. –,
I read the book some years ago in high school. I can’t remember anything specifically anti-Catholic in it (the author was an Anglican who also wrote on John Henry Newman), though there’s no pro-religious message in it either.
More specifically, and in favor of the book, I’ve heard Catholic scholars use the whole concept of dimensionality as an analogy for our inability to grasp theological problems in their fulness. E.g., the Line’s inability to comprehend what it would be like to live in a plane, and the Square’s inability to comprehend what it would be like to live in a world of solid bodies, are akin to our inability to “get” things like the Trinity, Predestination, and the Eucharist.
So I’d say let her read the book, and then talk about that with her!
God bless,
Sophia Mason
P.S. I’m not a math person, and I found the book mildly enjoyable; but my math-loving friends loved it!
Note: For more on the relationship (not a cordial one, unfortunately) between Abbott and Newman’s thought, and more on Abbott’s possible intentions in writing Flatland, see this essay.
My problem with Flatland is its gnosticism. It’s what makes the protagonist wind up talking in a vacuum, and it’s what makes its author disapprove of Newman.
Indeed, in the essay I appended in the end, the author makes a comparison between Plato’s doctrine of the philosopher who left the cave and the story of Flatland–and you don’t get a much more gnostic view on knowledge than in that cave story!
That’s why I think the usefulness of Flatland lies in applying it to areas were no human can know anything, and the only difference is between those who know they don’t know (Christians) and those who don’t know that they don’t know (atheists). This is not to say that our faith is irrational, or that it is only for the elect (gnosticism!) but it is to say that we have in some sense become the “elect” (St. Paul’s usage) by the gift of God’s grace and choosing, and that our faith has doctrines that are impossible to prove (the Trinity) just as it has ones that are quite obvious instinctively, and provable rationally (the existence of God).
I hope that was clear and not heretical!!
I think the one problem with Flatland, from a math point of view, is that the “flat” word isn’t truly, flat, it isn’t truly two dimensional. Why? Because a two dimensional world literally has no height whatsoever, zero, nothing, while the “flat” world where the book takes place has just enough height to allow for the characters to exist in it and see each other. It can’t be any other way because a flat world literally couldn’t exist, it is only a mental or mathematical concept, just like the line you draw is not actually a line, because it not only has length, but also some with (the same with as the pencil’s point). Sorry for the digression, but this just happened to feel like a good night to be a pedant!
“I’ve heard Catholic scholars use the whole concept of dimensionality as an analogy for our inability to grasp theological problems in their fulness.”
I do this 6th grade Catechism every year.
Flatland lays the basis for a view of successive dimensional worlds, a higher one in which the Father and His angels live, and a still higher one in which the love of Father & Son soared to become the Person of the Holy Spirit. Such a geography then explains how judgement and resurrection are accomplished easily. This is all detailed in the book Techie Worlds, available from Amazon.
George Richter at eng2gbr@aol.com