[lit-ideas] Re: can you imagine 11 dimensions?
- From: "Paul Stone" <pastone@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:38:40 -0500
> the discussion goes nowhere until we understand what the question asks.
> Consider: lots of people declare, and quite sincerely to be sure, to be
> unable to imagine spaces with more than 4 dimensions.
> None the less, we have spaces like that (in one theory called M or B, we
> have 11 dimensions and there are lively debates: at least the first
> conclusion to draw is that those people imagine [do they?] what's not
> imaginable by (many) others
The extra dimensions are not truly 'imagined' -- last time I looked,
the word 'imagine' had the root "image" in it -- as in, form an image
in one's mind of something.
While these theories (string, super string, supersymmetry, m-field,
etc) are _mathematically_ needing of more than four dimensions, no one
can actually IMAGINE what the fifth and beyond is like. Nobody has
every given me a decent description, either visually or literally of
Calabi-Yau manifold.
Nobody has every ACTUALLY explained the concept of what a single (or
even non-dimensional) string really IS. It's all completely
theoretical and based in math. The concepts behind the math are simply
ideas of how to start the math, not real or imagined fully-formed
conceptualized "things" -- thus not truly imagined. IN other words,
while someone can 'accept' that there may be 11 dimensions and do the
math to sort of support such a supposition, we can not, as humans,
with our limited sensory input and our minds ever possibly imagine
truly what those other dimensions are any more than we can truly
imagine what god is.
If you lived on a flat screen in two dimensions with no time, you
simply would NOT be able to understand what four dimensions was. We
are similarly limited. This is not to say something can't exist, but
it is almost certainly, without truly revolutionizing our senses,
impossible to ever apprehend.
unconvinced that anyone is more imaginative than I,
five
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