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Carl Sagan on 4th Dimensional Visualization

2009, November 9 - 9:40am — Greg Kontos
Critical Path Innovation: PhysicsPeople: Carl SaganFree Tagging: Multiple Dimensionality

Warren Ellis over at Freak Angels took a by-week from writing his wonderful comic book. During the interlude he suggested a few links. One of them was this nice little bit from Carl Sagan. Just so everyone knows, this is not material that originated with Sagan. There was a lot of 'flat land' and 'string land' writing and conceptualizing around 1900 (give or take 30 years). But this is a great presentation of the material.


Comments

2009, November 14 - 10:35am — Ian Thal (not verified)

Flatland

    There was a lot of 'flat land' and 'string land' writing and conceptualizing around 1900 (give or take 30 years)

Actually, there wasn't.

Sagan gave credit in this clip, clearly explaining that he was presenting a free-adaption of an episode from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbot Abbot and published in 1884.

Charles Howard Hinton, a friend of Abbot's, who had in 1880 first discussed the possibility of a fourth spatial dimension, or time represented as a fourth spatial dimensions (in the interest of comic book geekery, I should note that he's referenced repeatedly in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell) wrote a 1907 sequel to Abbot's book entitled An Episode on Flatland: Or How a Plain Folk Discovered the Third Dimension. Two shourt books over a period of 23 years isn't "a lot."

After that, it wasn't until the 1960s that there was a revival of interest in Flatland.

2009, November 14 - 12:11pm — Galactic Overlord

More Flatland

P.D. Ouspensky is one more source of 'flatland' type writing. He published 'The Fourth Dimension' in 1908. His book Tertium Organon, published in 1912, also references other writers and sources for this sort of conceptualization.

2009, November 14 - 12:49pm — Galactic Overlord

More Flatland

And Einstein?

2009, November 15 - 1:38am — Galactic Overlord

Upon reflection, I stand by

Upon reflection, I stand by my statement.

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