The fourth dimension is a mathematical reality, there is no doubt about it. It is questionable whether it is a reality in space. However, there were and still are scientists who were willing to accept the reality of space. The mathematician Charles H. Hinton (1853–1907) was one of them, as was the German mathematician Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866).
Without going any further, nowadays scientist Michio Kaku connects the fourth spatial dimension with the oscillations in hyperspace, which leads to the superstring theory, since this theory requires a spacetime of 10 or more dimensions. With such a background and fascinated by the combination of science and literature, Jacobo Siruela has just edited a volume that brings together three fundamental texts to introduce us to the universe of the fourth spatial dimension.
The first of these is an 1884 novel by Edwin A. Abbott entitled Flatland. It is a mathematical satire that helps us in a didactic way to easily understand what the field of spatial dimensions consists of. Abbott achieves this through a narrator christened Square A. The following text is more scientific in nature, as it is a series of excerpts from “The Fourth Dimension”, the work in which Charles H. Hinton presents us with the visual development of a four-dimensional geometry. He called it the Tesseract, a term that comes from ancient Greek (téssereis actines, “four rays”) and describes a hypercube with 24 faces, 16 vertices and 32 edges.
Finally, the volume concludes with an artistic approach that is oriented towards the development of mathematics. This text is entitled Projective Ornamentation and was signed by the American architect Claude Bragdon (1866-1946), for whom geometry and numbers are the basis of all forms of formal beauty. Because the number has the secret “inner meaning of all things”.
In his dialogue with nature, Bragdon combined the essence of Pythagoras with that of Goethe and ventured into the terrain of four-dimensional geometry. a real property of space in which – according to Bragdon – the ornamentation and architectural forms must be projected. His expressive speech refers us to Debussy, the French composer for whom music was a mysterious mathematics whose elements participate in the infinite.
At the now-defunct Rochester Central Station, architect Claude Bragdon applied Pythagorean number sense in its relationship to musical proportions. For Bragdon, train stations, like factories or workplaces, should not turn their backs on nature; Its harmonious construction, always in search of beauty, must please society. Bragdon was a utopian; No doubt.
With the compilation of these texts in a single volume, we are faced with a successful combination of the fabulous with the rational, the scientific with the magical; a contemporary opportunity – in the words of Bertrand Russell – to stimulate the imagination and free thought “from the shackles in which the present has imprisoned us”. An exciting read for anyone looking for a different approach to reality.
The stone axe It is a section in which Montero GlezWith a penchant for prose, he makes his special attack on scientific reality to show that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.
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