Flatland A Romance Of Many Dimensions

One of the greatest questions in doctrine is that of determinism. Is everything in our world pre-determined? Is our universe plainly a collection of giant gears and levers which proceed to turn and altogether determine the future? This may be an out of the question question to consider, as I will illustrate using Flatland.

For the gain of the reader who is unfamiliar with flatland, I digress momentarily. Flatland — A Romance In Many Dimensions is set in a two dimensional world, which is populated by simple polygons. These polygons possess a given number of sides based on their importance in society. For example, women subsist as a line segment and are the lowest beings in society, whereas priests — always male — are circles — an infinite sided polygon. The main “character” (a modest square) has a series of dreams and visions, in which worlds of 0, 1 and 3 dimensions are revealed to him. After observing “spaceland” the routine two dimensional world is no longer sufficient for him. He wants more!

I, the author, too want more. What is the fourth spacial dimension genuinely like. One may construct simple analogies by extending two dimensions to the third, nevertheless this does very little to give one a fourth dimension impression.

I now return to the main focus of this article — determinism as inspired by Flatland. Consider this two dimensional Flatland, and it is inhabitants. Pretend they have been squabbling for years, and are disunited by this rudimentary philosophical question. One side believe that everything is determined, whereas the other side argue “NO! I recognise I have free will. Furthermore, I recognise for a fact that the universe is not deterministic — I saw a priest appear in my house just the other day. He just appeared there… materialised out of nothing! Whats more, he grew more spectacular and bigger, until abruptly he started to shrink again, and ultimately disappeared” Indeed, for a body to of a sudden appear in your lounge room at random does seem to be rather conclusive proof versus scientific determinism. We here in Spaceland, however, observed the very incident to which the Flatlanders are referring. We recognise in fact that the “priest” which the Flatlanders observed was not a priest at all. It was a sphere (bearing in mind that Flatland priests are circles) passing through the surface of Flatland! Obviously, to the Spacelanders, it was exclusively predictable that the spheres projection on Flatland would be a circle. It was predictable that as the sphere passed through the surface of Flatland the circle would exaggerate until Flatland passed the spheres diameter, at which point the circle would shrink again. It was even predictable that Flatland’s inhabitant would argue over the origins of the “priest” as if it was a random aspect of a divine being.

For now I will leave you with the following thought, and save for next time the significations that this has on free will. Can we sensibly argue versus determinism? Even if we concluded that, in our observable dimensions, things were unquestionably not deterministic how may we refute the possibleness of determinism in a higher dimensional space?

Flatland A Romance Of Many Dimensions Image

Flatland A Romance Of Many Dimensions Pic

Flatland A Romance Of Many Dimensions Photo

Flatland A Romance Of Many Dimensions Image

Flatland A Romance Of Many Dimensions Picture

Flatland A Romance Of Many Dimensions Picture