Scope and Contents

This book is published as a sequel to "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott Abbott, published in 1884, in which all the inhabitants are two dimensional. Stewart, who is a professor of mathematics, created this contemporary guide of a journey through Mathiverse. His main character, Victoria Line, explores the "present understanding of the shape and origins of the universe, the nature of space, time and matter and modern geometrics and their applications." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This copy is the first edition, first printing.Amazon.com Review: The product of an agreeably dotty cleric named Edwin Abbott Abbott and first published in 1884, Flatland distills all that the Victorian era knew of higher mathematics--and then some--into a witty, complex novel of ideas.Ian Stewart, the author of the equally witty sequel, Flatterland--which adds to Abbott's store of science the key discoveries made since--does a superb job of explaining the original book's enigmas, allusions, ironies, implausibilities, and what Douglas Hofstadter would call "metamagical themas." Among other things, Stewart comments on Abbott's comments on such things as the nature/nurture controversy, the fourth dimension and beyond, the role of multidimensional spaces in economic systems, infinite series and perfect squares, celestial mechanics, and other matters close to the hearts of cosmologists and science buffs alike. Stewart's notes make an entertaining and learned addition to an already...