The geometrical doctrines of physical space, the Flatland of Abbott

From my book www.mpantes.gr

The flatland
The A. Square
The doctrine of Riemann
The doctrine of Poincare

The Flatland, the A. Square

One of the more effective methods for imagining the fourth dimension is the
method of analogy. That is, in trying to imagine how 4-D objects might appear to us , it
is a great help to consider the analogous efforts of a 2-D being to imagine how 3-D
objects might appear to him. To understand the physical space problem, we will move
fantastically in a world of two-dimensional beings living on a positive curvature surface,
a huge sphere, which, as is known from the analysis of the elliptical geometry,
behaves like the Euclidean plane for small areas of our daily activity.
The country of two-dimensional is called Flatland, its inhabitants are tiny flat
shapes-beings, eg Mr. A. Square, a square of side a, likewise B. equilateral Triangle,
etc. that living in this huge spheres surface believe that are living in a Euclidean plane
as they are plane creatures. Thus they are like us, except that we have the supervision
of the three dimensions! What it means for A. square the third dimension? What it
means for us the fourth. Through the two-dimensional we can imagine non-Euclidean
spaces although Kant argued that this is impossible, the space and time, say, are

properties of human consciousness and not properties of the world. But the twodimensional image of, helps and puts on the stage, the revolution of Riemann.
The A. Square first appeared in the book Flatland, written by Edwin A.Abbott
around 1884. It is not clear if Abbott was actually the originator of this method of
developing our intuition of the fourth dimension. In his book, Rudolf Rucker,
"Geometry, relativity and the fourth dimension" describes hilarious images from the

lives of residents of Flatland, and this makes us understand the engagement of the
fourth dimension in our world. Here is Mr. A. Square who can move up/down or
left/right or in any combination of these two types of motion , by he can never move
out of the plane. He does not Know but only these two directions on the plane.

He

is completely oblivious of the existence of any dimensions other than the two, and
one day a miracle happened in his life. This was the contact of A. Square with the
Third Dimension: the A- sphere, an intelligent being of three-dimensional space,
approached the level of the country of Flatland. When the A-sphere first came into
contact with the 2-D section, A-Square saw a point and as A. Sphere continued his
motion the point grew into a small circle which became larger and then smaller and
finally shrank back to a point, which disappeared. Figure (1)
A-squares interpretation of this strange apparition was he must be no circle
at all, but some extremely clever juggler. And what should we say if we heard a spectral
voice proclaim, I am A-hypersphere I will teach you the fourth dimension being a
point which slowly into a sphere which then shrank back to a point and finally was out
of existence!

The difference between the two experiences, says Rucker, is that we can easily
see how to stack the circles up in the third dimension so as to produce a sphere, but it
is not at all clear how we are to stack the spheres up in the fourth dimensions as to
produce a hypersphere (a sphere in the four dimensions).
Rucker describes this contact of A. Square with the sphere, as the beginning of
an adventure and risks for him. The sphere came back and insisted speaking for the
third dimension, but A. Square remained unconvinced, so A. Sphere did some more
tricks. First he removed an object from a sealed chest in A.Squares room without
opening the chest and without breaking any of its walls. How was this possible? A
chest in Flatland is just a closed 2-D figure, such as a rectangle. But we can reach in
from the third dimension without breaking through the trunks walls. The analogy is
that a 4-D creature should be able to remove the yolk from an egg without breaking
the shell! Everything on Earth is opened to a D-spectator even the inside of our heart. A
lot of people used to think so at the time of Spiritualist movement around 1900. The
idea was that spirits were 4-D beings who could appear and disappear at any point see
everything and so on.
The only way in which A. Sphere could finally convince A. Square of the reality
of third dimension, was to actually lift him out of Flatland. He explained that after such
a trip could return as his own reflection in the mirror, he would have another
orientation in the plane as in Figure 2. The analogous in us means that after a similar

trip in the fourth dimension we would return to our bowels outside and our
skin from the inside! All such terribles!

Finally A. Square believed in the Third dimension and became a preacher. He was
persecuted by the priests, but with the intervention of the A.Sphere he was saved and
remained throughout his life a proponent of the idea of the third dimension.
The linking of the experiences and conclusions of the Flatlanders with our own experiences and
conclusions, will be apocalyptic.. Through the Abbotts Flatland we will follow our own path to explore
our physical space, making frequent comparisons .

Centuries ago this adventure of A.Square, the people of Flatland cultivated science and
geometry. Their Euclid, taught them the Euclidean doctrine (5th axiom) and interpreted the
world around them, considering it as flat and endless, but with a thorn in their mind: why
we

apply

the

5th

axiom?

How

do

the

lines

will

behave

at

infinity?

Nevertheless their geometry was the standard of scientific thinking of Flatland. And
when many years after, their technology has developed too far, the two-dimensional
intelligent beings decided to do a large-scale experiment in order to check their geometry.
Therefore conducted an enormous triangulation with light rays, in order to measure the
sum of the angles of the triangle formed.
In our history, Gauss appears to have been the first to undertake space explorations of
this sort, when he performed triangulations with light rays

from one mountain top to

another. But his observations were too crude and executed over too small an area to detect
any trace of non-Euclideanism. Lobatchewski also suggested astronomical observations
conducted on the course of rays of starlight through interstellar space.
So the Flatlanders measured the angles of the triangle extended triangle in their putative
flat world, and at the same time brought the great crisis in the science of their society. Each
triangle which was counted, had a different angles sum and no 1800. This crisis could be
compared with our own confusion in the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment, lead
to deadlock all our ideas about space and time.
So the light triangulations was the trigger for the two-dimensional to start exploring
their physical space. They understood that the results of the light triangulation were not
Euclidean. And yet there was no way to find out if they were on a sphere or on a flat sphere
(the familiar plane where we installed the spherical geometry), which as we know are
isomorphic spaces. They had, then, to consider the space as an Euclidean plane and change
their view about the light path which until then was considered as Euclidean straight line, or

maintain the straight orbit for the light deciding that are living in a sphere, recognizing this
mysterious third dimension.
So the proposals that have dominated for the interpretation of the findings of the light
triangulation, arrived at two considerations, in that of Riemann and to that of Poincare.
Riemann in a classical mathematical formulation in his article "assumptions underlying
geometry" drew the attention of two-dimensional to a distinction that seems so obvious as
established: the distinction between the unlimited straight line and infinitely extended. The
difference is easily understood: a circle is an infinite line that never ends, but has a finite
length. On the other hand, the Euclidean straight is also unlimited in the sense that never
ends, but it is of infinite length. This change of the concept of straightness, implies for
Riemann, a new way of measuring distances, the formula

2 =

2 + 2 + 2
2 + 2 + 2
1+
2

which is the differential expression of the known type for the e-distance. In this type of
Riemanns

line element,

the interpretations of k created our two basic geometric

doctrines for the physical space of our (their) world.

Riemanns doctrine
The term k for

Riemann is the curvature of the space, that is due to a

property of space. He talked about the third dimension and curved spaces, taught the
elliptical geometry of the sphere and of course the first fan was A square. But all of this
could not be certified, and the fundamental truths

about space, Riemann says are

deduced from experience. So Riemanns views were ignored for many decades till
Einstein created the general theory of relativity. It is analogous to the view that we are
three-dimensional, and

live in the curved surface of a hypersphere!

Now we

understand the difficulty for the two-dimensional: the isomorphism established by the
stereographic projection it just means: the two-dimensional although understand that
their geometry is not Euclidean, they can not prove if they live on a sphere or a flat
sphere. (The Euclidean model of elliptic geometry). Lack of experience on the third
dimension conceals a direct observation. The two-dimensional experimenter can not
detect any curvature on the straight line, curvature of the kind the Riemann suggested

that across the third dimension. Moving onto a geodesic of sphere, he says with
certainty that moves in Euclidean straight line, he does not "break" neither right nor
left. Similarly we can not find any of our curving line beyond the three known
dimensions, eg curvature at the time dimension, so we are in the same position as the
two-dimensional: the proposal of Riemann we have to change the geometry, the
space is not Euclidean, is curved at the third dimension and can no longer to measure
distances by Euclidean geometry" was not readily understood. But it is to Riemann
that they owe the insight that physics and geometry are inextricably mixed in the
problem if space.

The doctrine of Poincare

But another solution of the problem suggested by Poincare: the attitude of
the pure mathematician. For him the term k is not due to a property of space but in
physical conditions on the bodies of the space. He claimed, as in the geometric model
of a flat sphere, that space was irrelevant to the strange effect of light triangulation,
but the bodies and their behavior in the space, created the deviation from Euclidean
geometry. Space is not an entity such as the matter or the light beam. It is a
mathematical structure that enables us to describe the behavior of bodies in it, and the
question what is the correct geometry of space is meaningless as the question for the
correct measuring units. It is the meter or the yard? He considers undeniable that the
distances should be measured using the formula (1 ) as we have seen in previous
chapter, but his main difference is the interpretation of the term k. The term k alters
the familiar Euclidean distances in the infinity small, from place to place ( the x, y, z of
the formula), as to disfigures the bodies into space. It follows that by a mere variation
in physical conditions the same space would be considered non-Euclidean or Euclidean.
Obviously, by reason of this contradiction, space itself can have nothing to do with the
problem. The type of space which physicists are discussing reduces therefore to a
relational synthesis of physical results. Space itself remains amorphous. Really: If the
moving body is the measuring rod of the distances

- O ------ 1 ------ 4 --- 5 -------- , then if in a position the two ends coincide with
points O and 1 and when removes at right with the 4, 5 then there are two possible
conclusions:
A . the rod was diminished ( Poincares aspect, changing of physics )
B. the actual distance between the O and 2 is equal to the distance (4, 5),
(Riemanns aspect, changing of geometry ) .
As a further illustration of the elusiveness of absolute space and size, Poincare
asks us to conceive of a hollow spherical volume placed anywhere in space, and to
assume that the temperature in the sphere decreases progressively from the centre ,
becoming absolute zero in surface. He assumes that this hollow sphere is peopled by
imaginary beings whose bodies expand and contract with the temperature and that all
material bodies behave in a similar manner. If we should supplement these
suppositions by assuming that the refracting index of the medium in the spheres
interior varies in a certain definite way, the rays of light in this hypothetical world
would describe circles. This closed universe would of course appear infinite to its
habitants, since as they proceed from the centre to the surface their bodies would
grow smaller, their steps shorter, so that it would be impossible for them to reach its
boundary however long they walked. The geometricians of this imaginary world would
define as remaining congruent when displaced, hence as rigid, those bodies which
appeared to them to remain the same wherever they carried them. Owing to the paths
devised for the light rays and to sameness in the reduction of the sixes of all objects as
the centre was left behind, the expanding and contracting bodies of this universe would
present all the characteristics of rigidity. On conducting measurements with their rigid
rods, the hypothetical beings would obtain Lobatchewskian results, the entire world
would appear to them as non-Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry would be as
inevitable to them as the Euclidean geometry is to the average man. Some Kan among
the two-dimensional beings would explain that the non-Euclidean space was the a
priori form of pure sensibility, transcending reason and experience. Then eventually
some great mathematician would come along, sweep all these cobwebs aside .
In other words, divorces space from its material content, geometry from
physics, places space and its geometry beyond the control of experiment; so that there
is nothing left for the physicist to argue about. ..All geometric systems are equivalent and

thus no system of axioms may claim that it is the true geometry. The principles of geometry are
not experimental facts, and in particular Euclids postulates cannot be proved by experiment
(Science and hypothesis)

So what seems clear is that direct experimental evidence in favor of one or the
other proposal doesnt exist for the Flatlanders. They lived in a sphere, but how to
prove the existence of curvature, since this was the mysterious third dimension? But
the deformable bodies could not be determined experimentally. Because for a such
proof should be a solid body in the world that would measure the deformation of the
other bodies, this being rigid. But where to find such a body since from deformation
not excluded anything? And if there was such a thing, one could say that this was
deformed rather than the bodies of their space. So the two proposals seemed
equivalent:
they could change the geometry

holding

physics unchanged (Riemanns view)

Or change the physics, keeping unchanged the geometry (Poincares view)

George Mpantes mathematics teacher
Books
www.mpantes.gr
D Abro. A. (1950) the evolution of scientific thought from Newton to Einstein N Y .Dover
Rucker R.V.(1977) geometry ,relativity and the fourth dimension N.Y Dover