19th-century occult roots of higher dimensional research in physics

[C C]

https://aeon.co/essays/the-occult-roots-...in-physics

EXCERPT: . . . In [German physicist Johann] Zöllner’s view, based on his readings of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant and the German mathematician Carl Gauss, the fourth dimension was as real as the three dimensions of space. Due to their prejudices, Zöllner thought, most people don’t perceive the fourth dimension, but they could if they were properly trained [...]

Zöllner had ample precedent for reaching this seemingly audacious conclusion. The roots of connecting higher dimensions with a transcendental realm date back at least to Plato’s cave allegory, in which prisoners confined to a cavern observe two-dimensional shadows on a wall while being unaware of the three-dimensional world outside that produced them. But although Plato implied that we three-dimensional beings might be likewise oblivious to a greater reality, he didn’t explicitly argue that there was an actual fourth dimension.

A more immediate antecedent to Zöllner’s hypothesis is found in The Unseen Universe, a popular book published anonymously in 1875, and later revealed to have been co-authored by the Scottish mathematical physicists Balfour Stewart and Peter Guthrie Tait (a lifelong friend of Maxwell). The treatise speculates about links between scientific concepts such as conservation of energy and spiritual questions such as the persistence of life after death. In one brief passage, it connects the fourth dimension with an unseen realm:

Just as points are the terminations of lines, lines the boundaries of surfaces, and surfaces the boundaries of portions of space of three dimensions: so we may suppose our (essentially three-dimensional) matter to be the mere skin or boundary of an Unseen whose matter has four dimensions.

Zöllner knew enough about optical illusions to posit similarly that space’s restriction to three dimensions could simply be a persistent mirage. Perhaps, then, the world of the spirit, including all manner of psychic occurrences, had a perfectly natural explanation in a hitherto unexplored dimension. Goaded by the widespread interest in spiritualism at the time, Zöllner delved into connections between higher dimensions and the occult with greater gusto than anyone prior to him had dared. It was high time, he concluded, for the study of four-dimensional phenomena to be part of science.

[...] In the mid-1880s, despite [...] the prominence of quasi-mystical groups [...] several mathematicians published works trying to explain four-dimensional realms as realistic possible extensions of the known physical world. Their writings drew heavily on an analogy by Gauss, who imagined how a bookworm confined to flat pages would perceive the three-dimensional world as ‘unreal’ until informed otherwise.

[...] Other late-19th-century mathematicians began to imagine the fourth dimension as something far more familiar: the passage of time. The pages of Nature and other scientific journals featured speculations about a four-dimensional amalgam of the three-dimensions of space along with an additional dimension of time. These notions eventually received a concrete mathematical treatment in Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which enabled physicists to reclaim higher dimensions from the spiritualists. Long before then, though, they left their own imprint on popular culture.

[...] As the concept of spacetime became an integral part of physics, the fourth dimension began to lose its spooky edge. Scientists began to turn their attention to the realistic possibility of a fifth dimension. Nevertheless, higher dimensions continued to appear as common elements of horror stories and pop mysticism....

MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/the-occult-roots-...in-physics

[Magical Realist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t4aKJuKP0Q

[C C]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t4aKJuKP0Q

Difficult to say whether the geometry of "higher dimensions" -- as independent of mind -- would really exist in a phenomenal-like manner similar to how the 3D range is realized in our sensations, or in an abstract properties and principles manner we can only represent via formulaic descriptions and symbolic coordinates. (Which is to say, the latter merely getting converted to the former via the brain's cognitive processes and their conforming to a biologically innate or some a priori Kantian template.)

Abandoning altogether either approach to "spatial expression" (space, period) would seem to be transcending the concept of dimensionality, though "dimension" may have acquired non-geometrical meanings. Pregeometry, as an attempt to transcend, also apparently struggles to escape the very thing which it is supposed to be prior in rank to.

Geometry, pregeometry and beyond: This article explores the overall geometric manner in which human beings make sense of the world around them by means of their physical theories; in particular, in what are nowadays called pregeometric pictures of Nature. In these, the pseudo-Riemannian manifold of general relativity is considered a flawed description of spacetime and it is attempted to replace it by theoretical constructs of a different character, ontologically prior to it. However, despite its claims to the contrary, pregeometry is found to surreptitiously and unavoidably fall prey to the very mode of description it endeavours to evade, as evidenced in its all-pervading geometric understanding of the world. The question remains as to the deeper reasons for this human, geometric predilection--present, as a matter of fact, in all of physics--and as to whether it might need to be superseded in order to achieve the goals that frontier theoretical physics sets itself at the dawn of a new century: a sounder comprehension of the physical meaning of empty spacetime.

Unlike the pregeometry excursion further below, I'm not the least concerned about a "universe coming from nothing" or even the pre-conditions for a dense state which expanded into a cosmos coming from nothing. That seems solved by just chucking the presentism option of philosophy of time out the window (or at least demoting it from an objective slash global status to a specious, internal feature / appearance of consciousness).[*]

But such pursuits are interesting from the standpoint of trying to elucidate what a non-spatial precursor's characteristics would be (that's non-spatial with respect to both the phenomenal and the abstract ways of space being rendered). The precursor's characteristics seem to largely if not wholly consist of negative properties: minus this, minus that. Leaving conceptual slots or placeholders, but their being unsurprisingly empty of empirical content.

John Dobson: Must we assume that in the absence of particles and fields, and in the absence of space and time, there would be nothing? Or can we, without so rash an assumption, find clues to the nature of what Wheeler and Patton refer to as 'pregeometry'? ("...something deeper than geometry, that underlies both geometry and particles." And which they suggest "...must provide the Universe with a way to come into being.")

The other night at the telescopes, when we had them out on the sidewalk for public use, a young man approached me wishing to talk cosmology, and finding me not very enthusiastic [about his notion] that the observational evidence strongly supports the Big Bang, he demanded to know how I solved the problem of "creation ex nihilo" for the Steady State (as if there were no such problem for the Big Bang). I asked why he took the creation to be ex nihilo (out of nothing). I suggested that he might be jumping the gun, that it might be an unwarranted assumption. I reminded him that in the absence of time we would have the absence of change, but not necessarily nothing, and that in the absence of space we would have the absence of dividedness and the absence of smallness. "And the absence of largeness," he added. "Yes," I said, "but not necessarily nothing." (Size, whether large or small, would be finite, and in the absence of the finite we have the possibility of the infinite.) I said that to get the Universe out of the changeless, the infinite, the undivided was a very different problem from getting it out of nothing. He didn't seem to see that. He seemed to take the infinite as equivalent to nothing. Then I reminded him that ex nihilo was an expression of the Roman Catholic philosophers but that even they didn't get the Universe out of nothing. God was there. At that point the young man accusingly asked me if I believed in God. I replied that that was not our problem. Our problem was whether the Universe comes out of the changeless, the infinite, the undivided or ex nihilo. And I reminded him that we were not concerned with beliefs but with evidence.

The real question, as I see it, is not whether we live in a Big Bang or Steady State Universe, but whether the Universe arises ex nihilo or from Wheeler's 'pregeometry'. In a 1975 article entitled Is Physics Legislated by Cosmogony? J. A. Wheeler and C. M. Patton use the term "pregeometry" to refer to "...something deeper than geometry, that underlies both geometry and particles." And they suggest that "For ultimately revealing this structure, no perspective seems more promising than the view that it must provide the Universe with a way to come into being."

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footnote

[*] Plus, in the mainstream materialist's delegation of manifestations to only brains and equivalent cognitive systems (not to matter in general), the universe abroad is yet "nothing" to itself (actually not even a blank state like that). It is only mental experience that would have the self-evident validation of emerging from oblivion (a lack of all evidence, both empirical and intellectual).

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