The Scientists Ep. 1: Flatland -- Einstein's Muse

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to a fascinating journey into the limits of imagination, geometry, and scientific discovery. In this premiere episode of "The Scientists," a new series on the Into The Impossible Podcast Network, host Brian Keating—Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego—dives deep into the curious world of "Flatland," Edwin Abbott Abbott's mind-bending Victorian novel. But this isn't just dusty literature; it's a geometric allegory that shaped some of the greatest scientific minds, including Albert Einstein himself. Alongside surprising social commentary and a critique of rigid hierarchies, Keating unpacks the power of imagination in science, showing how boundary-pushing thinkers moved from heresy to genius. Sit back as you journey through dimensions with Brian Keating—plus a special segment from science communicator Carl Sagan—inviting you to rethink your own perspective on the universe and the unseen realities that might lie just beyond. Ready to challenge what you believe about reality? Stay curious and let’s step into the impossible together. Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 Key Takeaways: 00:00 "Exploring Flatland's Timeless Influence" 06:26 "Dimensional Perception in Flatland" 09:45 "Exploring Influential Scientific Books" 13:11 "Revolutionary Thinking and Scientific Rebels" 15:54 "Flatland's Influence on Einstein" 20:44 "Flatland: Three-Dimensional Encounter" 24:38 Understanding the Tesseract's Dimensions - Additional resources: ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/ 🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the scientists, a new podcast under the umbrella of the Into the Impossible Brain.
0:27.2	I'm your host, Brian Keating, the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego.
0:32.7	And each week on the scientist, I dive into the life and legacy of a legendary scientist, an
0:38.4	experimentalist, a theorist, an observer, all of them, uncovering insights you can apply to
0:44.0	your own work and your own worldview.
0:47.4	Science didn't appear fully formed.
0:49.6	It was built by real people, solving real problems under pressure with very human designers. Their ideas still
0:56.1	shape our future. We'll examine not just what they discovered, what drove them to make those
1:01.6	discoveries, and most importantly of all, who they were, from their obsessions and honors,
1:07.6	to their most spectacular ideas, their most brilliant blunders, and their most beautiful
1:13.7	of all human flaws.
1:15.9	Imagine a world with no up, no down, just length and width, no height, a flat, silent
1:25.2	plane where geometry is destiny, and thinking in 3D is blasphemy.
1:32.5	Welcome to Flatland. It's not just a story of math. It's a Victorian epic era, a science fiction fantasy, a red pill for physicists.
1:48.3	It's the allegory that put the theory of geometric unification into string theory seven decades before string theory was even a glimmer in its
1:55.6	creator's eyes. It's the mirror maze that Einstein stared deeply into, and today we're diving deep as deep as we can into the flatland.
2:05.6	But first, why would a novel written from 1884, written by a schoolmaster, still blow physicist minds today,
2:14.6	and why do I give it out to everyone who subscribes to my Monday
2:17.6	Magic mailing list on my website at briankeetting.com slash list? You'll actually get a copy
2:23.4	of it email to you. Einstein didn't read Flatland once. He devoured it, reading it again and
2:31.6	again because it taught him something that equations alone could
2:34.3	not. Imagine being so trapped in your own world that the very concept of up was heretical.
	...

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