It Feels Like Grabbing Infinity by the Hair
If you haven’t seen this, it’s worth a look: It’s a short video describing a way to visualize all the dimensions string theorists recognize as possible (ending with the tenth). It’s easy, and really fun!
If I were a scientist I’d think differently, but as a writer I find it quite easy to imagine, at least, an eleventh: If the tenth is the point representing all possible universes, then the eleventh would have to be the line joining possible and non-possible universes, yeah? (Science doesn’t like non-possible things, but philosophy sure doesn’t have a problem with them; and since once you get past our universe you’re in imaginary territory anyway, why let possibility restrain you?) That makes the twelfth easy: It’s the fold that brings the non-possible into contact with the possible, which, if I were exploring it, would certainly have something to do with imagination. The thirteenth dimension would be a point representing all possible-possible and possible-non-possible universes; or the sum total of being and non-being; and I’ll confess, I’m not sure I can imagine what a point outside that (which a line could be drawn to, representing the fourteenth) would be.
Something for which possibility and non-possibility have no meaning? The inevitable, maybe?
In any case, a fun video if your brain likes to splash in the really BIG mud. o/
At the very least, it makes flippant sci-fi talk of “infinite dimensions” sound a bit more incredulous, doesn’t it? I mean, string theorists poop out at ten, and at my best and most wide-flinging I’d be stymied by twenty. Wow.
4 comments
Hi,
That’ an awesome video. Thanks for sharing! I have to say though I can’t see the eleventh dimesnsion you are describing. You are saying that you have 1 point containing all the “possibles” and then you take another point that has the non-possible. The problem is that these points are not identical! In other words in your eleventh dimesnsion you will have a single “special” point and then all other points will be similarly non-possible. The way I see it that’s a problem… Now if you say that from someone else’s viewpoint they are all “possible” then you are entering the realm of these other “somethings” for which all of the dots in your11th dimension are all “possible”. But we could care less about that… right? For us they are truly non possible which in this sense means non-existent! Which is why string theorists would stop there i would think.
I would argue that imagination lives totally in 3D, since we can remeber what we imagined a minute ago. So basically time (4th D) slices through the dimension in which imagination lives, i.e. 3D.
Ok , now my brain is all twisted up….
Am I making sense? I don’t even know…
Happy thinking!
S.Q.
I love that vid. Thanks for showcasing it. On a related note, I enjoyed the stuff from dimensions-math.org. You can get the full vid from their site at http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_reg_E.htm
On a related note: many people use the term “dimensions” when they mean “planes”. Someone will “go to the xyz dimension”, when they simply go somewhere else. A dimension is an axis, and I think many lose sight of that. Easy example: A skyscraper has many floors because of the dimension of height.
Very good point about dimensions and planes! I tend to think of a dimension as a “meta-ing”; as backing up to see the whole from the outside (for instance, in 2D all you see is a white plane. Back up to 3D and you can see the edges of the paper). But obviously that’s an oversimplification of the mathematical truth as well.
Ha, brain-twisties are a good sign!
I think in LOWER dimensions, the non-possible is problematic, because like you said, there’s so much of it, and where do you put the dots anyway? But when you’re seeing “all the possibles” as a single dot, then I think “all the non-possibles” can be a different dot; the “dots” in this case are very very large sets, and arguable the set of non-possibles isn’t necessarily larger than the set of all possibles (not that the actual size would matter in this case).
Existence — and this may indeed be what string theorists aren’t okay with — doesn’t play into this formulation of things, I think. The existence of any “possible” is only a potential, so while none of the “nonpossibles” exist, it could very well be than many, or most, or all but one (!) of the “possibles” don’t exist as well. Or perhaps you could say that they do exist, but only as mental constructs. What is existence anyway???
;)
Thanks!
PD