Читать книгу A Theory of the Mechanism of Survival: The Fourth Dimension and Its Applications онлайн

7 страница из 37

All the same, as I hope to show very soon, it is, as a matter of fact, quite possible that there may be another independent direction fulfilling the prescribed conditions, in spite of the fact that we are at present ignorant of it.

This we can only realize by a consideration of the time-honoured but indispensable analogy of a two-dimensional world, or "Flatland."

This analogy I propose to examine in some detail in the paragraphs which follow.

But before doing so I wish to point out, and I do not think it will be necessary to do more, that a "line" which has length, but neither breadth nor thickness, can be correctly described as "One-dimensional space" i.e.:—space having only one dimension.

A mathematical "point," which has only position and neither length nor breadth nor thickness, can similarly be called space of no dimensions or "Zero-dimensional space." Also I wish to take the opportunity of defining one or two words which I may have occasion to use and have the merit of brevity.

(1) Lines which are drawn through a point for the sake of determining direction are called in Geometrical parlance, "Axes."