Charles Howard Hinton: The Fourth Dimension (1904/1912); A New Era of Thought (1888)

In an 1884 article entitled “What is the Fourth Dimension?”, Hinton suggested that points moving around in three dimensions might be imagined as successive cross-sections of a static four-dimensional arrangement of lines passing through a three-dimensional plane, an idea that anticipated the notion of world lines, and of time as a fourth dimension (although Hinton did not propose this explicitly, and the article was mainly concerned with the possibility of a fourth spatial dimension), in Einstein’s theory of relativity. Hinton later introduced a system of coloured cubes by the study of which, he claimed, it was possible to learn to visualise four-dimensional space (Casting out the Self, 1904). Rumours subsequently arose that these cubes had driven more than one hopeful person insane.

Hinton created several new words to describe elements in the fourth dimension. According to OED, he first used the word tesseract in 1888 in his book “A New Era of Thought”. He also invented the words “kata” (from the Greek “down from”) and “ana” (from the Greek “up toward”) to describe the two opposing fourth-dimensional directions—the 4-D equivalents of left and right, forwards and backwards, and up and down.

Hinton’s Scientific romances, including “What is the Fourth Dimension?” and “A Plane World” were published as a series of nine pamphlets by Swan Sonnenschein & Co. during 1884–1886. In the introduction to “A Plane World”, Hinton referred to Abbott’s recent Flatland as having similar design but different intent. Abbott used the stories as “a setting wherein to place his satire and his lessons. But we wish in the first place to know the physical facts.” Hinton’s world existed on the surface of a sphere rather than a flat plane. He extended the connection to Abbott’s work with “An Episode on Flatland: Or How a Plain Folk Discovered the Third Dimension” (1907).

The Fourth Dimension
Third Edition
Published by London: George Allen & Co, 1912

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A New Era of Thought
Publisher London: Swan Sonneschen & Co, 1888

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Art Silverblatt: Genre Studies in Mass Media: A Handbook (2007)

The study of various types of programming is essential for critical analysis of the media and also offers revealing perspectives on society’s cultural values, preoccupations, behavior, and myths. This handbook provides a systematic, in-depth approach to the study of media genres–including reality programs, game shows, situation comedies, soap operas, film noir, news programs, and more. The author addresses such questions as: Have there been shifts in the formula of particular genres over time? What do these shifts reveal about changes in culture? How and why do new genres–such as reality TV shows–appear? Are there differences in genres from one country to another?

Combining theoretical approaches with concrete examples, the book reinforces one’s understanding of the importance of genre to the creation, evolution, and consumption of media content. Each chapter in this reader-friendly book contains a detailed discussion of one of the theoretical approaches to genre studies, followed by Lines of Inquiry, which summarizes the major points of the discussion and suggests directions for analysis and further study. Each chapter also includes an example that illustrates how the particular theoretical approach can be applied in the analysis of genre. The author’s careful linkage of different genres to the real world makes the book widely useful for those interested in genre study as well as media and culture, television studies, film studies, and media literacy.

Publisher M.E. Sharpe, 2007
ISBN 076561670X, 9780765616708
Length 258 pages

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