A Wrinkle In Time
That is the title of one of my absolute FAVORITE books as a child. I bought it again as an adult but I haven't worked up the nerve to re-read it. I'm afraid to taint the magic, if that makes any sense. But the ideas of dimensions, especially as fabrics that can be folded or wrinkled, has always resonated with some subtle reality detector deep in my psyche.
So imagine how much fun I had with this (turn your speakers on before you click on the image! When you see the menu, click on "Imagining the Ten Dimensions" in the Navigation menu on the left, which will slide out as you mouse over there.)
If you are interested in exploring this further, I recommend a very entertaining (and enlightening!) book called Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. Which you can read free at that link. It's about some little critters that live in 2 dimensions and the types of trouble one has when he lifts off to the 3rd dimension and tries explaining it to his friends.
So imagine how much fun I had with this (turn your speakers on before you click on the image! When you see the menu, click on "Imagining the Ten Dimensions" in the Navigation menu on the left, which will slide out as you mouse over there.)
If you are interested in exploring this further, I recommend a very entertaining (and enlightening!) book called Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. Which you can read free at that link. It's about some little critters that live in 2 dimensions and the types of trouble one has when he lifts off to the 3rd dimension and tries explaining it to his friends.
I saw the 5th Dimension once back in the 60s. As A young sailor back in the Phillipines I swore I made it to the 7th or 8th a time or two, but it would take 3 days to get over it. If there are 10, that would take a lot to reach all of them. Probably an out of body experience. Great thoughts "A".
ReplyDeleteI think you have a blog post in the makings there GEM :-)
ReplyDeleteThey could have made the explanation of the 5th a little easier; I think of it as 2 dimensions of time. So, for example, the being in Heinlen's Stranger in a Strange Land saw humans as this long caterpillar, like the example they used, perceiving life as a line in time from birth to death. Nietzsche talks about this too in his idea on eternal recurrence.That we live the same timeline over and over again like hitting rewind and play on a VCR. (And how would we know?)
Looking from the 5th dimension, life appears fated. But that's where the 6th comes in. Time in 3 dimensions reveals an infinite number of possible futures for us.
Quantum physics "discovered" that reality isn't really built of little particles but rather fields of probability. And oddly enough, the agency that seems to collapse these waves of probability into one physical form or another isn't someting mechanical, it is consciousness. How weird is that?
So if humans ever learn to use their intentions skillfully it seems they could ride the waves of probability into any possible future for themselves. I actually think this happens in a negative way when someone is "diagnosed" with a terminal disease; they usually start falling apart immediately because they accept the possibility offered. Obviously there are more variables going on than this, but it's interesting.
Of course it gets weirder, like the 9th dimension where the past is changeable as well. Kind of odd how these clump in 3 groups of 3, like the 3 Norns in Norse mythology that weave the web of wyrd forming the destiny of humans at one of the 3 wells in the 9 worlds. What a wild, wild world.
uh, ok. but, that wrinkles in time, mom ordered thru the bookclub when we were kids...i still have that unless a burglar took it...you ever wanta read the original.
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