Answer by Federico Poloni for Topology in non-mathematical literature
This thread wouldn't be complete without something from Greg Egan. For instance, his short story The Infinite Assassin contains a "multiverse" that behaves like a Cantor set, and Diaspora is set in a...
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Answer by Federico Poloni for Topology in non-mathematical literature
Some puzzling literature not only for topologists but also for differential geometers: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion is the book that tells the story of Arda, the world in which The Lord of the...
View ArticleAnswer by user44143 for Topology in non-mathematical literature
Spoiler alert:In Ted Chiang's 1990 novelette Tower of Babylon, the miner who climbs the tower finds that the shape of the world
View ArticleAnswer by armoredchihuahua for Topology in non-mathematical literature
Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but recently i came across a book that claims to explain psychology using topology. The book in question is the "Principles of Topological Psychology" by...
View ArticleAnswer by Nik Weaver for Topology in non-mathematical literature
I know you want to "stay out of the usual torus/moebius strip stuff" but I can't help mentioning the infinitely long short story"Frame Tale" by John Barth.
View ArticleAnswer by user234212323 for Topology in non-mathematical literature
At the Bourbaki Seminar in November 1968 the participants were handed a (premature) announcement of Bourbaki’s death.At the end it saysCar Dieu est le compactifié d'Alexandrov de l'univers. Groth IV...
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Answer by Alec Rhea for Topology in non-mathematical literature
This one is a bit of a stretch, but I've always associated the Egyptian deity Apep with the long line.A depiction from the tomb of Ramesses I:Keeping in mind that hieroglyphics are a pictorial...
View ArticleAnswer by Pietro Majer for Topology in non-mathematical literature
Not sure if the single point topological space qualify (but why not?). In Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino has a hilarious story on life on such a space, All At One Point, before the Big Bang started the...
View ArticleAnswer by coudy for Topology in non-mathematical literature
The classical 1884 fiction Flatland contains a dialog between the square and the sphere, where the former tries to convince the latter that if Spaceland exists, then there must also be a space of four...
View ArticleAnswer by coudy for Topology in non-mathematical literature
Jacques Lacan is a french psychoanalyst who made use of topological concepts to discuss his theories.The Borromean knot played a special role in his 70's work, illustrating the relationship between the...
View ArticleAnswer by A. J. Pan-Collantes for Topology in non-mathematical literature
Maybe something like Borges "The Library of Babel". In this story he wrote "The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any hexagon and whose circumference is unattainable". You can think of it as a...
View ArticleTopology in non-mathematical literature
A great piece of knowledge that I heard from a talk of Robert Ghrist, is that one of the earliest instances of non-trivial manifolds (i.e. of dimension higher than 2) appears in Dante's Paradise, where...
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