Multidimensional - Philosophy

Philosophy

In 1783, Kant wrote: "That everywhere space (which is not itself the boundary of another space) has three dimensions and that space in general cannot have more dimensions is based on the proposition that not more than three lines can intersect at right angles in one point. This proposition cannot at all be shown from concepts, but rests immediately on intuition and indeed on pure intuition a priori because it is apodictically (demonstrably) certain."

Space has Four Dimensions, is a short story published in 1846 by German philosopher and experimental psychologist Gustav Fechner (under the pseudonym Dr. Mises). The protagonist in the tale is a shadow who is aware of, and able to communicate with, other shadows; but is trapped on a two-dimensional surface. According to Fechner, the shadow-man would conceive of the third dimension as being one of time. The story bears a strong similarity to the "Allegory of the Cave", presented in Plato's The Republic written around 380 B.C.

Simon Newcomb wrote an article for the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society in 1898 entitled "The Philosophy of Hyperspace". Linda Dalrymple Henderson coined the term Hyperspace philosophy in her 1983 thesis about the fourth dimension in early-twentieth-century art. It is used to describe those writers that use higher-dimensions for metaphysical and philosophical exploration. Charles Howard Hinton (who was the first to use the word "tesseract" in 1888) and Russian esotericist P. D. Ouspensky are examples of "hyperspace philosophers".