Shadows of Reality – The Fourth Dimension in Relativity, Cubism and Modern Thought - Hardcover

Tony Robbin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300110391 ISBN 13: 9780300110395

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2006

Synopsis

In this insightful book, which is a revisionist math history as well as a revisionist art history, Tony Robbin, well known for his innovative computer visualizations of hyperspace, investigates different models of the fourth dimension and how these are applied in art and physics. Robbin explores the distinction between the slicing, or Flatland, model and the projection, or shadow, model. He compares the history of these two models and their uses and misuses in popular discussions. Robbin breaks new ground with his original argument that Picasso used the projection model to invent cubism, and that Minkowski had four-dimensional projective geometry in mind when he structured special relativity. The discussion is brought to the present with an exposition of the projection model in the most creative ideas about space in contemporary mathematics such as twisters, quasicrystals, and quantum topology. Robbin clarifies these esoteric concepts with understandable drawings and diagrams.

About this title

About the Author

Tony Robbin has had more than twenty-five solo exhibitions of his paintings and sculpture since his debut at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974. He is a pioneer in the computer visualization of four-dimensional geometry and the author of Engineering a New Architecture, published by Yale University Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300110391
• ISBN 13: 9780300110395
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160