The Fourth Dimension of Space in Late 19th-Century Science/Fiction - Single View

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Type of Course	Seminar	Number	3209
Hours per week in term	2	Term	SoSe 2015
Department	Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik	Language	englisch
Additional Links	comment
application period	01.04.2015 - 20.05.2015 enrollment

Gruppe 1:

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		Day	Time	Frequency	Duration	Room	Lecturer	Canceled/rescheduled on	Max. participants
	Seminar	Do	16:00 to 18:00	wöchentlich	16.04.2015 to 23.07.2015	1.11.2.03	Dr. Coffey		30

Description	Please follow the "comment" link above for more information on comments, course readings, course requirements and grading. In 1884, the scholar, teacher and clergyman Edward A. Abbott published the short novel Flatland in which he imagined a two-dimensional world populated by squares, triangles, and lines, and ruled over by circles. The narrator of the novel, a square, encounters a being from the third dimension – a sphere – and is made to realize that what he has taken for the natural limits of knowlege and imagination – his flat world – is in fact part of a larger three-dimensional reality. Abbott uses this science fiction tale to reflect upon and criticize his own society and to think about the (im-) mutability of our certainties about our world. He does so by taking up mathematical and geometrical notions of a fourth spacial dimension that had been developed in the course of the 19th century – before Albert Einstein redefined the fourth dimension as a primarily temporal phenomenon. The fourth dimension was much discussed in the late 19th and early 20th century, and was used not only to ask questions about science and epistemology, but also to formulate a critique of society and of common modes of representation (in Cubism for example). Some writers even used the fourth dimension to “explain” the spiritualist practices of a well-known and notorious medium. The seminar will take Abbott’s novel as a starting point to investigate the idea of the fourth dimension as it was taken up in various works of fiction (e.g., Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, several stories by H. G. Wells, and The Ghost of Canterville by Oscar Wilde) as well as philosophical and (pseudo-) scientific treatises. It will look at a specific moment of the history of science and at the ways scientific thought and popular culture intersected and influenced each other at that time.

Description

Please follow the "comment" link above for more information on comments, course readings, course requirements and grading.

In 1884, the scholar, teacher and clergyman Edward A. Abbott published the short novel Flatland in which he imagined a two-dimensional world populated by squares, triangles, and lines, and ruled over by circles. The narrator of the novel, a square, encounters a being from the third dimension – a sphere – and is made to realize that what he has taken for the natural limits of knowlege and imagination – his flat world – is in fact part of a larger three-dimensional reality.
Abbott uses this science fiction tale to reflect upon and criticize his own society and to think about the (im-) mutability of our certainties about our world. He does so by taking up mathematical and geometrical notions of a fourth spacial dimension that had been developed in the course of the 19th century – before Albert Einstein redefined the fourth dimension as a primarily temporal phenomenon. The fourth dimension was much discussed in the late 19th and early 20th century, and was used not only to ask questions about science and epistemology, but also to formulate a critique of society and of common modes of representation (in Cubism for example). Some writers even used the fourth dimension to “explain” the spiritualist practices of a well-known and notorious medium.
The seminar will take Abbott’s novel as a starting point to investigate the idea of the fourth dimension as it was taken up in various works of fiction (e.g., Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, several stories by H. G. Wells, and The Ghost of Canterville by Oscar Wilde) as well as philosophical and (pseudo-) scientific treatises. It will look at a specific moment of the history of science and at the ways scientific thought and popular culture intersected and influenced each other at that time.

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Lecture not found in this Term. Lecture is in Term SoSe 2015 , Currentterm: SoSe 2024