Exploring Flatland: Imagination, Knowledge Limits & Suppression of New Ideas

Flatland is a novella that contemplates the struggle of introducing new ways of thinking and the suppression of new thought by authority figures for their own benefit.

The Sphere says in chapter 20 “To be self contented is to be vile and ignorant, to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy” in regards to the Point being a self contained dimension. The point is unable to conceive anything outside of itself, and therefor when it hears the Sphere or the Square it understands their voices as it’s own thoughts. The Sphere uses this to encourage the Square to aspire beyond and not be limited to his own reality, and the Sphere seems to have realized his own error in doing this regarding dimensions above his own. In the second half of the 19th century when this novella was published there were ongoing debates about the limits of human knowledge. Rosemary Jann points out in her intro to Abbotts Flatland that one interpretation of Flatland is that imagination can correct the arrogance found in materialist science and dogmatic religion. Sir Isaac Newton had famously stated during the age of reason (18th century) “Hypothesis non fingo” which implied that knowledge came from observation, not speculation. The Flatlanders seem to follow this logic when it comes to other dimensions. Because the Flatlanders couldn’t observe the other dimensions, they didn’t acknowledge the speculation of their existence. Many new scientific discoveries in the Victorian era challenged religious beliefs and there was some conflict between religion and science. Some during this period began to marry religion and science with that idea of speculation or imagination. Because the square cannot recreate or draw what he saw in Spaceland, he relies on faith, imagination or speculation to support his scientific claims. John Tyndall said that “there might exist vast reaches of knowledge requiring only the development of the proper intellectual organs to perceive them” which is what the Square needs to convey to his peers in order for them to accept his unobservable claims about Spaceland. The idea of speculation wasn’t just benefiting the advancement of scientific ideas but religious as well. As Jann points out Thomas Henry Huxley coined the term ‘agnostic' to label the unknowability of the divine, and the square is agnostic in that he knows that the amount of other dimensions are unknowable to him and beyond the reach of observable proof. Abbott, a priest himself, felt that insisting on the literal truth of miracles that clearly violated scientific law was more likely to weaken faith than to strengthen it. By rejecting rigid laws of Flatland, the Square is able to achieve a higher level of enlightenment than his peers. This results in suppression by the Bourgeois of Flatland, who like the Victorian era, were the ones shaping the societies values to support the laws which kept them at the top regardless of truth, as the circles had seen the sphere as well. As Jann puts it “suppression of heretical views about higher dimensions, views that could undermine their claims to absolute superiority”.

@brian can you reply to this thread

I've read a hunk of this book, it's an interesting one. The great mystics that have experienced truth first hand have been confounded by the rational mind's inability to contain concepts that are beyond logic. Man can become obsessed with the hand/finger pointing at an idea, and completely miss the idea. In flatland there are points and lines from the perspective of a flatlander. Lao Tzu says "the tao is that which cannot be spoken of." The movie Samadhi talks about the "perfume of the divine" after the experience of Samadhi. I like that concept. It can remind you of the thing, but it's not the thing itself. The rational mind can be a dangerous thing.