More on Flatland eyes

[ffutures]

Yesterdays mini-argument about the eye-mouths of the Flatlanders got me thinking about something I'd like to put in the "serious science stuff" appendix for the RPG - e.g. the cool stuff I've thought of that isn't actually needed to run the game. Just exactly how does a Flatlander see?

The problem is that there is no day or night in Flatland - there is all-pervasive sourceless illumination. And sourceless presumably means that it is occurring inside a Flatlander as well as outside, e.g. inside the Flatlander's eye. Theoretically this ought to drown out any light coming from the outside, unless there is some mechanism (such as a lens) to concentrate a lot of external light. Even then the optic nerves would be firing constantly, making it very difficult to perceive details. We know (because Abbot tells us) that they can see, although not very well - however, their visual problems are partly a result of the 2D environment and partly caused by the constant mist that he describes, which limits visibility to a few feet.

So I think that what I need is a neural mechanism that is very good at detecting light coming in horizontally but ignores all other sources. And that is only one molecule thick (one atom theoretically, but I'm going to allow myself a little leeway here.)

My best though here is an arc of something like flat optical fibres, set up so that any photons coming in anything other than horizontally whizz out again. With something to reduce horizontal scatter, e.g. a pinhole camera mechanism. This would explain the mouth/eye structures I put on my previous drawings quite well - the lips (more like mandibles)/eyelids are opaque, with a teeny gap at the corner which works like a pinhole camera. When a Flatlander wants to eat it opens its mouth/eye and the mandibles slice off bits of food. It is somehow pushed out of the cavity and down into the rest of the flatlander as past as possible, but even so a Flatlander will effectively be blind for a few seconds every time it eats a mouth-full of food.

One result of this is that the narrower figures (especially isosceles and females) will have very narrow fields of vision, which could be a problem.

Okay, that's my first thoughts - anyone able to suggest a better mechanism?

Comments

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I'm not following your logic. How do you get from "any broken side is death" to "only one opening"?

I can see that a tube-gut is out, but you could have, for example, food ingested 'floating' around their innards (lookng rather like vacuoles) and then excreted through a temporary sphincter.

Likewise you could have various light-sensitive spots or cup eyes around the perimeter.

What's your time-frame for finalizing this?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Hopefully early next month.

There are lots of problems with multiple body openings in something that's one atom / molecule thick and appears to have an exoskeleton. Even nerves would weapen it.


I ought to mention that this has been like this through two releases of the game over several years - I'd really prefer not to make major changes at this stage. I'm simply trying to expand some of the details.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that the exoskeleton doesn't need to have permanent openings for many functions. For excreting, for example, your internal blob of material hits the inside of the exoskeleton, at which point the exoskeleton begins to develop on the inside edge of the blob (the outer edge is already against the exoskeleton). Once the inner membrane is complete, the exoskeleton splits, the blob is expelled, and then the exoskeleton fuses again. Once it is fused the membrane dissolves. Could be relatively quick.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Similarly, for eyes you could have transparent sections that admit light into the interior. Once there various fibre-optic-like bits could direct it towards the central nervous system (or what passes for one in a Flatlander).

Implications of this (using the exoskeleton for seeing) is that soldiers and the lower orders have trouble seeing what's directly in front of them (assuming a mouth at the apex instead of an eye). I can see advantages (in battle, officers have a better view than their men) but you might not like the implications.

You could use the same mechanism I used for excrement for eating, if it's in reverse. It means thaat eating takes longer and is a vulerable time, but that has interesting role-playing implications.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The "vomiting instead of excreting" thing is discussed in The Planiverse, though the author came up with another answer - a thing he described as a "zipper organ" along the gut which meant that his 2D creatures could eat at one end and excrete at the other without falling apart.

Like the fine details of how sight works, I'll probably be discussing the Flatland version of digestion etc. in the scientific section. I'm waiting to read Iain Sinclair's "Flatterland" first, since he's the kind of guy who thinks of this sort of thing and may have answers to a lot of the technical problems we're discussing. If so I'll need to contact him about using them - fortunately we've met a few times so hopefully he'd be willing to go along with it for a charity project.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I've skimmed Flatterland, and didn't spot discussions like that (which was rather disappointing, as Stewart's books with Jack Cohen had raised my hopes). I might have missed it, though.

I'll admit the combination eye-mouth organs bother me. Being blind while eating seems like a really big evolutionary drawback, especially for Flatland herbivores that (presumably) would have to spend a lot of time eating.