| Dimensions | 2002-05-11 02:53 3 comments |
 by Flemming FunchA subject that continuously fascinates me is that of higher dimensions. I'm not primarily thinking about the meta-physical idea of dimensions, but rather the matematical. I believe that a lot of our problems would be easily solved if we learned to think and operate in more than our customary 3 or so dimensions. We can most easily understand that by studying dimensions of a lower number than 3. If you look at something in 2 dimensions, it is all flat, like a piece of paper. And you can see everything on the paper at the same time. Likewise, a 4th dimensional being would quite naturally be able to see everything in a 3 dimensional scene at the same time, including what is at any point inside your body, or inside closed rooms, or inside solid objects. That only seems strange or impossible when seen from the lower dimension. Like, a 2 dimensional "flatlander", living in the plane of a piece of paper, would consider it inexplicable magic that you can see inside geometric figures, as he certainly can't. The most famous account of these things is historically the book "Flatland", which is from the 19th century. Since, matematically, the higher dimensions are functioning in pretty much the same way as the lower dimensions, we can predict things about them by studying lower dimensions. And we can look for similar phenomena in higher dimensions as we find in lower. Maybe develop some instincts for how things work in the higher dimensions that we can't directly see. I think that part of what might be "wrong" with the world at this point is that it is evolving into more dimensions, and we haven't evolved with it yet. So we're trying to solve 4th or 5th dimensional problems with 2 or 3 dimensional thinking. Specifically, ideas that seem to collide in 2 or 3 dimensions do not have to collide if we add more dimensions. I seems to remember that some of the more recent scientific theories about the universe require that there is at least 9 dimensions in order to explain phenomena that we can observe. So it is not like higher dimension is some sci-fi idea. Rather it is that we're a big narrow-minded in insisting that the world is all flat, or just 3 dimensional. See many resoruces about higher dimensions at Ms.Guidance to Xtra Dimensions |