first what is a dimension? a dimension is a feature or attribute of a thing according to dictionary. now an attribute always cling to a thing. no thing, no attribute.
is space-time an attribute/dimension? if yes then the next question is who’s attribute? if it is a thing, then will it be that no thing, no space-time? the answer is no becoz space and time come before all things becoz a thing requires a space to stay. so space comes first then other things, space-time can’t be a dimension.
A 3D object is like an infinite amount of 2D objects stacked together. Take a cube for example. It’s really an infinite amount of squares combined. The 3rd dimension of depth, is the range that these squares occupy. From point x to point y.
A 4D object is like an infinite amount of 3d objects stacked together. Take time as an example. It’s really an infinite amount of 3D objects combined. The 4th dimension of time is the range that these 3D objects occupy. From point x to point y.
Time is a valid and relevant dimension.
Spacetime is actually 6 dimensional; The 6 Dimensions of Spacetime
And as difficult at it is to realize, space is caused by “things”. No-thing means no-space.
If I remember correctly, the 4th dimension is time on its own, ergo mobiles being 4D art.
According to M-theory, there are not 4, not 6 but 11 dimensions.
if spacetime is 4th, 6th or 11th dimension, i would humbly ask whose dimension is spacetime? what is the thing that hold spacetime beside 3Ds? how could it be that in the beginning when nothing exists, spacetime existed? a dimension always cling to a thing, in the beginning when nothing exists, to whom spacetime clings?
Who said there even was a beginning, or prior to that point there was nothing?
what was there before the big bang? i take big bang as the beginning point.
I’m haven’t read James’ theory, or M-Theory, but as for what the 4th dimension relates to :
People, to my understanding, are four dimensional. We span across length, width, depth and time. Therefore, time is our attribute and an attribute of all objects that also span across it.
A line could be considered to be two dimensional. For it has a dimension of length, from point a to point b and it could also have a dimension of time, when it came to existence and when it leaves it. A to B.
A question. If a line is infinitely long, could one say that this dimension doesn’t exist? For there would be no points to this dimension, merely it’s intersection with other dimensions. It would be a redundant dimension, therefore, we could dismiss it.
Perhaps existence itself has an infinite dimension of time. Therefore, one could dismiss time completely in relation to existence, for it is redundant and nonexistent?
The way I might answer this question is, in just basic 3-dimensional Euclidian space, if you have defined a shape mathematically, you can input any X, Y, and Z coordinate and see if a piece of that shape occupies that X, Y and Z coordinate.
You can do that in 2 dimensions as well, and 1. And 4.
Similarly, if you ignore Relativity and just view the universe as a plain Euclidian space with 3 spacial dimensions and 1 time dimension, one can imagine it being completely possible to check fan X, Y, Z and T coordinate to see if a piece of any given being occupies that space.
For example, one might be able to come up with a 4 dimensional shape that represents a moving sphere – just define a sphere with a center that changes as T changes. After defining the sphere with a center that changes as T changes, you can check if any X, Y, Z, and T coordinate is inside or outside of that sphere.
Reality is certainly more complex than that, but this might give you an idea of what it would mean for space-time to be an attribute/dimension. Or maybe I’m full of shit.
4th dimension is a calculating tool, no a “thing” or experience or possible experience for us. It is a mathematical construct. Just think of this, every object you see is 2d, but our minds just happen to do this mysterious process of turning 2d experiences into 3d. And here is the interesting thing about 4d, there is no motion or change. It is all static, which definitely goes against experience.
The idea of time being static fits well with determinism, from my point of view.
Wait, what? First, if we are in agreement with what the 4th dimension is (i.e. time), then by saying it is impossible for “us” to experience, it should follow that none of us ever experience anything as the sequential nature of our perception could not be without it. You may argue that time doesn’t for all intents and purposes exist in the absence of any entity capable of observing it, but I don’t see how you can logically deduce that we can’t experience it. Perhaps you disagree on what the 4th dimension is?
Second, a box with the dimensions 1"H x 2"W x 3" D is actually two-dimensional (despite three dimensions being noted) and it is in point of fact our mind that turns this experienced thing into a three-dimensional object?
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It boggles my mind how many people actually think something can magically pop out of nothing, with no impetus.
I think what he’s saying is rather that our eyes see a 2-dimensional projection of a 3-D object – clearly true, as evidenced by the lack of depth perception of a one-eyed person. Each individual eye gets a 2-dimensional image, and when the images from each eye are put together in the brain, we can experience depth via triangulation.
The object is still 3-D, but our eyes…well, look at a retina. It may be curved, but it’s fundamentally a 2-dimensional array of cells.
Yeah, if that’s what s/he’s saying. I’m asking because I don’t know, especially in light of the preceding paragraph.
You just hit the contradiction in believing in the 4th dimension (space-time), because we experience sequential nature and this is impossible with 4th dimension. There is no change to experience and yet we experience it. So it is false.
Does that box have depth? If it does then it is 3d, if it does not then it is 2d. All our experiences have no depth until we add depth to them. Once we add depth, they can take on innumerable shapes.
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t – at least to me – make any sense whatsoever. I think you must’ve missed the point of a temporal dimension or haven’t been able to visualize/comprehend it as such. Let’s imagine ourselves a banana. Place it on an imaginary mat in Euclidian space, say x = 0 y = 0 z = 0. It now (hypothetically) occupies a point in space, no? But due to the lack of a temporal dimension, it will stay nice and yellow (or red, if you prefer) indefinitely – because there is no time through which it can progress. Now let’s throw it into an imaginary four-dimensional space. Voiles! We can imagine our banana at locus x = 0 y = 0 z = 0 t = 0s at peak ripeness…and we can imagine it at x = 0 y = 0 z = 0 t = 4233600s quite mushy and likely covered in fruit flies. We could also imagine instead that at t = 42s, you ate the banana and thus its locus moves through these four dimensions simultaneously. Privy, or have I proven myself horribly mistaken?
Anything two-dimensional is an abstract object, i.e. a concept; you cannot physically construct something two-dimensional. Now certainly our visual experience of the world at any given freeze frame could certainly be two-dimensional, but as soon as you add another frame, perspective, and thus a three-dimensional nature, is observed.
#1 above…I think I have an interesting solution to this, something I learned in Calculus:
Consider a topographical map of a mountain, for example:
It’s a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional object.
You can consider the mountain itself, of course, as a static 3-dimensional object, existing in X, Y, and Z space. What a topographical map does is this:
Assume Z is “up” and X and Y are represented in the image. What you do is you go to a certain Z coordinate (a particular altitude) and record the contour of the mountain on the Y and X plane, and then go a specific distance up to a new Z coordinate and draw a new contour of the mountain, and then go the same distance up and draw the contour again, etc. etc. until you’ve got the whole mountain mapped like in the picture above.
Now, the picture above is of course a static 2-dimensional image that represents a static 3-dimensional object. However, there’s one more approach that I think is relevant to this typography explanation: instead of viewing the image above a static 2-dimensional image, try to imagine it as an animation going through one layer at a time, starting with the lowest layer and sort of scanning upwards. If you can imagine such an animation, what you’ve done is you’ve mapped the Z spacial dimension to the time dimension.
Now, above I gave you a chance to imagine a 3-dimensional world in which one of the dimensions was time – what we have, simplistically speaking (it’s more complicated than this, but this is approximately the case if we ignore time dilations and other complicated things that I have no idea about) is a 4-dimensional world in which one of the dimensions is time. Instead of taking a 3-dimensional object and splitting it up, over time, into 2-dimensional slices, what we experience can perhaps be described as taking a 4-dimensional universe and splitting it up into 3-dimensional slices, with each different slice experienced at a different time, just like above when you imagined each 2-dimensional slice experienced at a different time in your mental animation.
So, (simplistically speaking) we could either imagine the universe as a static 4-dimensional object, or a changing 3-dimensional object, just like we just viewed the mountain as either a static 3-dimensional object but then imagined it as a changing 2-dimensional object.
something else you should remember from calculus… position =2 dimensions (m), velocity = 3 dimensions(m/h), acceleration =4 dimensions(m/h/s)
I must humbly admit ignorance to whatever point it is you’re trying to make.