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

[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.