A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension)

ery and conquest, not of a new world, but of a new space?

The existence of a space of four dimensions can never be disproven by showing that it is absurd or inconsistent, for such is not the case. Not only has the higher space hypothesis such validity as the great law of analogy can give, but it solves many of the problems and reconciles many of the contradictions which confront the modern man of science. So true is this that Helmholz Hermann von Helmholtz, a German physicist and philosopher. continually kept the possibility of physical higher space before him in his dynamical reasonings, which are among the classics of physical science. Kelvin Lord Kelvin, a prominent British physicist. also felt the pressure of the mathematical reality of higher space so strongly that he declared himself ready to accept it as an explanation of physical phenomena when these could be more consistently explained by such a concept.

The idea that space may have more than three dimensions may seem highly revolutionary, but it is no more so than the idea that the world is spherical instead of flat, or that the earth revolves around the sun instead of the sun around the earth. These familiar and established truths contradict the evidence of the senses, and therefore they were received with incredulity until the proof of them became overwhelming. Should the evidence in favor of a many-dimensional space become overwhelming, we should be forced to accept the idea and come to think in terms of it. In other words, if we came to observe in space contradictory facts, and if these facts forced us to ascribe to a body two attributes or qualities which we formerly thought could not exist together,