Edwin Abbott Abbott
1838-1926
Okay, so the odd double-name explanation first--it comes mostly from when his father Edwin Abbott married his first cousin, Jane Abbott. Ah, well...
He did well in school, earning scholarships to Cambridge. He was ordained as a deacon by age 24 and a priest by age 25. By age 26, though, he became a master teacher, headmaster of the City of London School, and he remained at that post until his retirement in 1889. A devotee of Shakespeare, Abbott compelled each student to read one Greek and one Shakespeare play each term.
It wasn't until his later years that he began writing in earnest. He published over 50 books, many to be used as school texts. However, nearly all of these were textbooks, literary scholarship, or theology. Only one is a work of fantasy and is unique to English literature, Flatland, first published under the pseudonym of A. Square. The first part is clearly a satire of Victorian England, while the second part, more story-like, plays with the idea of a fourth dimension.
But the novel also fits into Abbott's theological leanings. Rudy Rucker writes that Square's journey is a "perfect metaphor for the mystic's experience of a higher reality" (in Stewart, xvii). The introduction to the Princeton edition of the novel says that "It is as if the story of Gulliver were told by the mayor of Lilliput or the adventures of Alice by the White Rabbit.... The reader has to stay with the story all the way through to appreciate the change that takes place in the storyteller."
But while he reformed the schools, he was most provocatively a religious reformer, too. A member of the Broad Church, he opposed the high mystical language of the Church of England. This quite possibly provided a motivation for his writing of Flatland, as his rivals believed in an unquestioning acceptance of Church dogma. Abbott's view was that the laws of the universe must exist according to reason and that faith can be supported through the processes of thinking well.
Perhaps the 19th century's Tractarian controversy might shed some light. Anglican priest John Henry Newman published a work entitled Tract 90 in 1841 which called on the Church of England to return to traditional practices. Unsuccessful, Newman turned to the Catholic Church in 1845 and was soon ordained as a priest and later a cardinal. Abbott and others in the Church of England saw this conversion as a direct threat--Abbott believed that Newman had been duped and would go on to fool others into believing in "credulity," the acceptance of the improvable and unlikely. Not surprising, the two biographies Abbott wrote in his lifetime are of his idol, the rational Francis Bacon, and of his nemesis, Cardinal Newman.
What Abbott's motives completely were, however, will likely never be known. Most of his personal records and notes were stored at Cambridge, but were borrowed in the 1930s and subsequently disappeared.
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Isaac Asimov on Flatland
...If a limitation is inherent, because of a body's physical limitations, how can one get around it? How does someone explain color to someone who has been blind from birth, or music to someone who has been deaf from birth? One can explain the differing wavelengths of light and of sound; one can refer to analogous differences in sensations that can be experienced, such as those of touch. An intellectual understanding can be reached, perhaps. But never can this compare with the level of comprehension that the sight of a garden, or the sound of a Beethoven symphony, even for a few seconds, could bring about.
But what about the limitations that represent only an ingrained habit of thinking? The Flatlanders accept not only their two-dimensionality as an unarguable law of nature, but also the mental inferiority of women. Yet while the Sphere tries to correct the two-dimensional limitation, he makes no effort whatever to enlighten the Flatlander over the matter of feminine inferiority. But then, this Flatland attitude reflected the common British attitude in Victorian days (as did the set-in-stone class distinctions of Flatland) and we may suspect that the author himself may have participated in those now-antiquated social views although he was totally enlightened with respect to dimensionality.
This book, then, should lead us to question the limitations we set to our Universe generally, not only those that are mathematical and physical, but those that are sociological as well. How far are our assumptions justified, and to what extent are they merely careless, or self-serving, misrepresentations of reality?
Asimov, Isaac. Flatland Introduction. New York: Harper Collins, 1983. viii-ix. |
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References to Shakespeare in Flatland
I leave it to you to find their meaning in context!
Title Page, First Edition
"O day and night, but this is wondrous strange." (Hamlet I.v.164)
"And therefore as a stranger give it welcome." (Hamlet I.v.165)
Title Page, Second Edition
"Fie, fie, how franticly I square my talk!" (Titus Andronicus III.ii.31)
Preface to the Second and Revised Edition
"One touch of Nature makes all worlds akin." (Troilus and Cressida III.iii.175)
Part One
"Be patient, for the world is broad and wide." (Romeo and Juliet III. iii, 16)
Part Two
"O brave new worlds, That have such people in them!" (The Tempest V. i. 183)
The End
"The baseless fabric of this vision..." (The Tempest IV. i. 151)
"Melted into air, into thin air." (The Tempest IV. i. 150)
"Such stuff as dreams are made on." (The Tempest IV. i. 156-157)
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Abbott & Carroll
Square in Wonderland
Here are a few interesting points to consider!
Both Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwige Dodgson) and Abbott were clergymen and also professional mathematicians. Carroll taught math at Oxford. Carroll's mathematics dominated his life; spirituality dominated Abbott's. They were contemporaries, writing during the same Victorian era and satirizing many of the same Victorian manners and thinking.
Perhaps it might be said that Abbott's purpose in Flatland was to instruct readers through amusement while Carroll's purpose in Alice in Wonderland was to amuse through instruction (Alice is constantly "taught" by the others). Both books, though, are used in science classes from physics to astronomy and, of course, math.
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From The Onion
Volume 41 Issue 33
17 August 2005
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory
KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.
"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.
Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."
Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world's leading institution of evangelical physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible.
According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God's Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.
The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."
"We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids," Burdett said.
Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.
"Let's take a look at the evidence," said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden."In Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, 'And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' He says nothing about some gravity making them fall—just that they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, 'But mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upwards.' If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling."
Critics of Intelligent Falling point out that gravity is a provable law based on empirical observations of natural phenomena. Evangelical physicists, however, insist that there is no conflict between Newton's mathematics and Holy Scripture.
"Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how."
"Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God can do whatever He wants.'"
Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.
"Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the 'electromagnetic force,' the 'weak nuclear force,' the 'strong nuclear force,' and so-called 'force of gravity,'" Burdett said. "And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus."
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