Re: OT hypercube (was: Con-other)

In a message dated 5/31/2008 03:45:36 AM Central Daylight Time,
un.doing@GMAIL.COM writes:


> As I grew older I started getting sceptical about the
> whole concept of dimensions, because, my reasoning went, no matter how small
> you make a point, it still occupies volume. The only question is whether it
> is measurable from a human perspective. Similarly a line is just a really
> emaciated cylinder etc. etc.
This is essentially Buckminster Fuller's objective to modern geometry.
Points, lines, etc., are all just mathematical objects, so they don't have to
have length, width, height, mass, etc.
By definition, a point (0-dimensional object), line (1-dimensional object),
and plane (2-dimensional object) are impossible in the real world.  But they're
very useful ideas anyway.
In particular, there may not be spatial dimensions higher than three (string
theory notwithstanding), but tesseracts, hyperspheres, and the other higher
dimensional objects still exist as mathematical objects, with properties that
sometimes help solve problems in the real world.

stevo   </HTML>