Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot.

          The book “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions” by Edwin A. Abbot 2010 explains dimensions through the life of an object. For example, there is a chapter in which he describes what it would be like to live as a two dimensional square. This is an object which is completely flat, perhaps surrounded by other similar objects such as a triangle or circle. From a frontal view these objects are seen just as we would imagine them to be, but from the side they have no depth, so can only be represented by one another as lines. I compare this to a piece of paper, we can see it is a rectangle but from the side we can only see a thin line. Thus he concludes that in a two dimensional world it would be near impossible for a two dimensional object to imagine a three dimensional world as it is something they cannot comprehend and have never seen before. The two dimensional world has no depth. Abbot creates a scene in which a sphere goes to visit the flat square. The square at first does not believe that he is seeing more than just a line, and that he is for the first time experiencing depth. The square still refuses to believe that a world beyond the two dimensional one exists, so the sphere takes the square to a three dimensional world, and finally he understands. Abbot then discusses that the square asks the sphere if there is a world beyond the three dimensional, and the sphere does not understand. The sphere is confused and shocked, stating that he cannot grasp anything more than the world he lives in. Consequently he believes this theory is relevant to our lives in the three dimensional world, and that we cannot visualise a fourth dimension as we have nothing in our world that relates or is even close to the fourth dimension.

          My thoughts and attitude towards the unknown ideas of the fourth dimension after reading Abbot’s book have drastically changed. The specific chapter of the book discussing the life of the square helped me understand my own doubt as to why I cannot understand or visualise what the fourth dimension is. I do have visions in my head but they are only representational of what it could be. After wasting a lot of time before reading this book, I now know that it is ok to not understand and that I perhaps spent far too long a time being confused as to why I couldn’t grasp it.

          I began questioning what my reasoning was for researching the fourth dimension, because if we cannot see or understand it then how do we know if it will ever exist. Even if it does, it is not something that will ever effect us. But when working in three dimensions within my studio work, I wanted to know if I could take it any further and if I could incorporate any other dimensions or techniques that could take it to the next level. A basic three dimensional shape needs three things to be mathematically correct; length, width and depth. This allows us to figure out its physical mass, thus allowing the object to exist as 3D. The fourth dimension has been considered to be many things by numerous theorists, such as light and time, though any element I feel could help enhance my outcomes in studio practice, so this has proven a helpful topic to research.