Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Throughout his academic and authorial careers, Edwin A. Abbott expressed anxiety about the limits of knowledge, even knowledge gained through rigorous scientific exploration. In Flatland, even the most intelligent characters struggle with a similar problem: despite witnessing extraordinary events with their own eyes, they do not believe what they have seen, and when they do finally accept these perceptible truths about the world, they are likely to misinterpret them. This suggests that scientific observation is not always the surest path to an accurate understanding of the world.

This phenomenon first manifests in Flatland in the Square’s dream of Lineland. The Square emphasizes the King of Lineland’s extremely limited perspective, but the king insists that he can accurately see everything: “Such a life, with all vision limited to a Point, and all motion to a Straight Line, seemed to me inexpressibly dreary; and I was surprised to note the vivacity and cheerfulness of the King” (45). Despite the Square’s genuine wish to enlighten the king about his condition—to give him “common sense”—the latter feels a kind of rapturous love for his kingdom and refuses to accept any scientific evidence offered by the Square (47).