Metaphysics
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
― Carl Sagan
We cannot prove what we cannot perceive. We live in a three dimensional world, and to think about the fourth dimension would be the equivalent of holding out a cube in front of you and seeing the shadow it casts on a flat surface. The shadow that the cube is casting on the flat surface is a two dimensional perception of a three dimensional object. The cube loses critical attributes such as its perpendicular 90 degree angles at each end of the cube’s sides, because it is no longer expressed in its native dimension. This is what happens when expressing objects through different dimensions. The way the object is perceived in one dimension will be changed to perceive it in another dimension, because the perceptions have been altered. The tesseract is the same shadow that we would see when casting a shadow from a cube onto a flat surface, but instead of the 3rd dimension being perceived in the 2nd dimension, the tesseract is the 4th dimension being perceived in the 3rd dimension. This, as explained earlier, means that the perception has been altered to the dimension that is perceiving another dimension, so in this scenario, the fourth dimension is being explained in the perception of the third dimension.
For example, if a three dimensional object such as an apple were to interact with the second dimension, it would present itself in a cross section of itself in that dimension. This is because attributes are taken away when switching through dimensions. The depth of the third dimension is non existent in the second dimension, so the three dimensional apple will be cross sectioned through the second dimension, since the second dimension is length and width, while the third dimension adds height. The fourth dimension then adds position in time, but this is impossible for us to perceive, since we live in the third dimension.
What this implies, is that if we were to interact with entities past the third dimension, they would appear to us in our perception of our dimension, and not how they actually look in their own dimensions. We would instead see a so called “cross section” of the way they look in the fourth dimension, but in our dimension, since that is the only way we can perceive them. We would hear them as a voice coming within ourselves, and as such would think that we are crazy. Interstellar has a great scene depicting this.
My hypothesis is that based on the experiences people have when taking DMT and other psychedelic drugs, have near death experiences, have hallucinations such as those with schizophrenia, along with the various myths and esoteric knowledge about how the world works, we can come to the conclusion that there is much more to the world than what we can perceive in this dimension, and as such cannot test things that may in fact exist, but may never be seen by the naked eye.
With this analysis, we can also come to the conclusion that the materialist view, that of “what we can see and observe and test is all that there is” is simply untrue to an extent. It could very well be the case, but we cannot be 100% sure that it is. This is because we cannot see past this dimension, and because of this, we are unable to test what lies beyond. We are stuck in a pond much like a koi fish, and the only way we can see beyond is if something greater than us were to pick us up and show us more. Until we know definitely what is going on, it would be rather naive to think that our little pond is all that there is, and try to theorize what may lie beyond, maybe even beyond the dimensions themselves.
Take for example a scenario with a square and a triangle in a two dimensional plane. They both live and see in a two dimensional way. If the square were to look at the triangle, it would see a line, since the two dimensional world lacks depth. If a three dimensional cube were to pick up the square and take it up into the air, using height which is nonexistent in the two dimensional world, the square wouldn’t understand what is going on. It would look down and see the triangle in a three dimensional way, seeing it no longer as a line, but as a triangle. Once the cube places the square back into its natural dimensional plane, first off, it would have seemingly disappeared and reappeared to the triangle who had been on the plane all along. The square would then try to explain that he had just experienced height, which is unknown to the triangle, and the triangle would ask the square to point at the height. However, it is impossible for the square to point to height, since it doesn’t exist in the two dimensional plane. We can use this example to extrapolate what it would be like if a human in a three dimensional plane were to somehow experience something outside of this dimension and his inability to explain to others what he had just experienced.
Learn more from a video with the great Carl Sagan.
