Food For Thought: You’re 3-Dimensional, but Thomas Jefferson was only 2-Dimensional.

Posted By: AZ Moderate
Posted on: Aug. 6, 2007 at 7:37 PM

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OK, let’s get the juices of thought flowing. Think about this.

In the 1800’s the French lifted off the surface of the earth with hot air balloons, as did Union artillery spotters during the American Civil War. On December 17, 1903 the Wright Brothers initiated heavier than air flight and we have never turned back.

Until those events took place, human beings were 2-Dimensional beings. We could travel in the x,y coordinates of space (east, west, north and south and combinations thereof) but we were limited to the surface of the Earth. That is if we wanted to live to tell about it.

Since that time, for, oh, about 100 to 150 years depending on whether you like hot air or heavier than air, we have become ever more agile 3-dimensional beings. We now travel in the z coordinate of space with confidence that would have completely puzzled the Pharaohs, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, the Caesars, Napoleon and Queen Victoria! And of course that was completely beyond their reach regardless of their power and wealth. We fly above the surface of the Earth without giving it much thought.

Caesar was just a simple little 2-D creature, while you and all humans living today are 3-D people. Even Thomas Jefferson was a 2-Dimensional person. Of course Hitler was a 3-Dimensional person. And …

We and our last few generations are unique in all of recorded human history.

Ever stop to think about that?

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AZ Moderate

Aug. 6, 2007 at 07:57:53 PM

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My intention with the “Food for Thought” series of articles is to plant seeds and stimulate growth. In this article I am taking a longitudinal look, a long view down the corridors of history, at one simple idea in order to suggest a perspective that escapes us in the rush and complexity of everyday activities.

It is easy to compare ourselves with the Joneses, a cross sectional look at the here and now, the people and events in the “next room”, while wearing historical blinders. You may or may not be “better off” than your neighbor, but remember that the average life span in the Roman Empire was 25 years of age. The age of 35 was elderly, and to live as long as Aristotle was to be venerated as a wise elder. If I remember correctly, Alexander the Great died at age 35.

Even the least among us here in America, and many people around the world, can fly over all the kings, emperors, heroes and people of wealth and power for all of recorded history, and that without even giving it a second thought.

Yes we have our challenges today, as have had all humans throughout history. But if this seed bears the fruit of thoughtful perspective for even one person, it was worth writing.

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indie616

Aug. 6, 2007 at 08:39:41 PM

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I don't know Moderate. I think it is all relative, really.

Think about those that discovered fire. What a life changing event!!

Or the invention of the wheel. It changed human activity forever.

Shoot-even medicine-changed things. Things we consider primative and even barbaric now were heralded as great achievements.

Each era has it's own great discovery's and inventions. They build on each other, and I think that each generation stands in awe of what "their generation" brought.

I recently attended a family reunion where we celebrated the lives of my Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma was born in 1909, Grandpa in 1908. (both are gone now but Grandma died at 97 in Jan and Gramps at 90 years old)

Anyway, I once asked Grandma what she found to be the most useful thing that came along in her life. She told me the washing machine-said it saved her time. (I remember spending summers on the farm as a youngster and "helping" G'ma and G'pa). And let me tell you---washing clothes was a chore before they got that first Maytag. The ole washboard and ringing clothes thru the "crankin" thing, over and over. Then, taking everything thing outside and hanging them on the clothsline.

And geez, then she IRONED EVERYTHING! Even Gramps overalls, which were only going to be covered with dirt, cow and pig s***, and hay! But things had to be "just right." When Gramps when out for his day's work-with his pressed overalls and shirt, he could have passed military roll call!

But, I digress.........!!!

I think that each generation brings some incredible things to mankind, either through invention or discovery. Some bad (ability to wipe mankind from the face of the earth) and some good---even just a washing machine.

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Free Thinker

Aug. 7, 2007 at 08:46:01 AM

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AZ,

You did spur some thought. The article was worth the writing.

I tend to agree with Indie about the discoveries of generations. Invention has taken an exponential rise relative to history and I feel that things are on the horizon that are totally unimaginable!

The question that I would like to throw in is with all of the inventions and innovations that have been created throughout history, can we not learn from history? If we truly are an intelligent species, shouldn't we learn from what history has shown us or are we doomed to repeat it over and over?

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AZ Moderate

Aug. 7, 2007 at 09:53:03 AM

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Your point is well taken indi616, but it misses the point. Nothing before flight changed us from 2-dimensional beings into 3-dimensional beings. That added a whole new dimension to human existence. We went from x,y beings to x,y,z beings. That was a quantum leap for humanity. While the discoveries you write of added power within the x,y plain of existence, none of them introduced a whole new dimension to humanity.

Free Thinker, you hit the nail on the head with the word “exponential”. Human “progress” up to that flight event was a smooth (with setbacks of course) increase that was accelerated by those discoveries that went before. But none of them leaped into a third dimension, an incremental leap for humanity. They were analog rather than digital events.

The Reaper, don’t let the flash and bang of nuclear power blind you to the point of this article. For all of its power, it is still just another event (albeit approaching God like power) along that exponential line of progress in the x,y plain of human existence. Just wait til you see the next event along that curve, but it won’t be adding another dimension to the human species’ envelope of existence.

Next someone will write that stellar observations and nano-technology are quantum leaps similar to flight. No, they are wondrous gifts to humanity that push the frontiers back beyond anything our ancestors dreamed of, but they did not release us physically from the x,y plain of existence.

Hey, I just realized that perhaps we should consider the mental realm apart from the physical realm in this dialog. Food for thought! But even the discoveries we have mentioned, including flight, are events exponential the analog curve of human MENTAL capability.

I rest my case.

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Free Thinker

Aug. 7, 2007 at 10:23:28 AM

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AZ,

That was my point (that I did not really make clear) in that what we have learned and where our "mental" state has evolved. At times, I think that it has remained static. I just hope that the mental power that has taken us to these three dimensions can take us to a much better dimension for humanity.

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www.MoronInCharge.com

Aug. 7, 2007 at 12:09:41 PM

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AZ Mod,

I'm one of those adults who still requests a window seat away from the wing whenever I fly. I have never lost the first time thrill of peering out the window and taking in a view from seven miles above the ground. Discounting a few ballooners and mountain climbers, no other person has ever had this vantage point in all of human history until about 100 years ago. Jet airliners today routinely cruise at an altitude over one mile higher than Everest. If you were fortunate to have flown on the Concorde (I wasn't), then your maximum cruising altitude is 57,000 ft., at which height the curvature of the Earth is generally perceptible.

Anyway, just because we have the technology and the intellect to appreciate our 3-D capabilities, that doesn't mean we are 3-D individuals. If we think 2-D, and fail to appreciate the new perspective offered to us, then we are still 2-D.

In 1968, Apollo 8 orbited the Moon, and this Earthrise picture was taken.

In 1973, the astronauts took this famous "blue marble" picture of the Earth from 28,000 miles away.

In 1990, Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles, was instructed to look back in the direction of the Earth to record this picture, inspiring Carl Sagan to write the book "Pale Blue Dot."

Apparently, despite the perspective afforded to mankind by these pictures, we still plod along in our 2-D lives, accruing our 2-D money to spend on our 2-D pleasures, and waging our 2-D wars (only 3-D from the point of view of dropping bombs). The frustrating thing is that we all have the information in front of us. We know we are in a 3-D (or more) universe, with only one home planet to use or abuse as we please. But we shut our eyes tight and plug our ears, and place our destiny in the hands of the master 2-D thinkers; or worse yet, a supreme being who has apparently lost interest in the underachieving 2-D people.

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Free Thinker

Aug. 7, 2007 at 02:20:21 PM

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Unfortunately, government does not allow 3-D thinkers. It would be a much better place if they did. But, that would mean that greed was taken out of the picture.

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AZ Moderate

Aug. 7, 2007 at 07:47:42 PM

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MoronInCharge, I too am a 'window with a view' flyer. I get a stiff neck but never get tired of viewing the wonders of creation from an elevation that my grandfather never had. What a treat.

Men and Women much greater than I have built empires and have done wondrous deeds, but I am the humble happy 3-D flyer thanks to so much of humanity that never left the surface of the Earth.

It was not my intention to wax spiritual or imply that 3-D people of today are better than the vast majority of humans over the ages. We 3-D people stand on the shoulders of those legendary 2-D people throughout history. Those that went before moved us little by little toward the quantum leap, and all of a sudden we could do what we saw the birds do but we could not do for all of recorded history.

The flash of your enlightened comment that “We know we are in a 3-D (or more) universe, with only one home planet to use or abuse as we please.” illuminates another subject: What and when will be our next quantum leap? What will allow us to become 4-D beings?

Some postulate that the fourth dimension is time. Makes some sense, since we exist moment by moment, and no two moments are identical. Kinda like the snapshots lined up on a movie film that give life to the still pictures of which it is made when motion and light are supplied. The analogy is not perfect because there are conceptually (although not physically) only 2 dimensions to a flat hunk of celluloid, or a snapshot, but it serves to illustrate the point.

Another possibility is the parallel universe. That would be kinda like finding ourselves living in a single room house. The room has width, length and height, thus it is a 3-D envelope of existence.

Then we open the door (black hole?) and find another room, another dimension. That would then be a fourth dimension on top of our familiar 3 dimensional room. There is more to the house than we had imagined.

One problem: we specify the dimensions we are aware of with an x,y,z nomenclature. We’ve run out of letters to udentify a fourth dimension. I suppose it could be t for time, or p for parallel. But I suspect there are many, perhaps an infinite number, of dimensions. That presents a real nomenclatural conundrum with only 52 letters upper case and lower case in our alphabet now, doesn’t it? Oh worry!

But let me ask both you and Free Thinker, how did the govmint get into this conversation? Here I am trying to leaven the bread of articles and comments, and somehow we always seem to return to a diet of unleavened bread made of the dough of politics (no pun intended).

Anyway, thanks for your comments folks. I have to leave now – I feel another article coming on …

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www.MoronInCharge.com

Aug. 7, 2007 at 09:44:22 PM

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AZ Mod,

You are much too humble to write of "titans clashing" and their conversation being above your head. I think you have a much more complete knowledge of things scientific than you let on.

In Einstein's visualization of space-time, time is indeed the fourth dimension. What sets this dimension apart from the other three spacial dimension is that we appear to only be able to move in one direction when it comes to time. We don't know why, but such a restriction does avoid a lot of embarrassing situations and paradoxes. Our current knowledge of physics points to similar etched-in-stone restrictions: we can't physically travel faster through space than the speed of light, we can't know both the position and velocity of a particle perfectly, and we can't apply our physics to a singularity.

But more recently than the Einsteinian revolution in physics, work in subatomic particle physics and string theory has been converging upon multidimensional formulations of the universe, with the familiar x-y-z and time dimensions, and many others tightly wrapped up on a microscopic or even subatomic scale. These dimensions are currently theoretical, and their existence, let alone their exact characteristics, are more conjecture than reality at present. However much experimental evidence is supporting the multidimensionality of the universe, and we may be on the cusp of confirming this when the Large Hadron Collider at CERN goes on line next year.

Higher order dimensions at work not only in our universe but extending into parallel universes is no longer the domain of science fantasy, any more than dark matter and dark energy are fantastical. The entire universe we live in may be a multidimensional membrane, and all the matter and forces within it -- with the exception of gravity -- are stuck on this membrane. Amazingly, gravity may affect other nearby parallel universes. It might explain why the force of gravity is so exceedingly small compared to electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. Think about it. Electromagnetism, for instance, confined to our universe's membrane, dissipates in force at the square of the distance as described by the inverse square law. So does gravity apparently -- but if it also dissipates into higher dimensions at the same time, then that might explain why the gravity of distance stars is so pitifully weak, while we can see their starlight across the expanse of the observable universe. Even more amazing than this is that gravity -- say from a massive black hole in our universe -- may be felt in another universe on a membrane parallel to and not to far away from our own. The converse would be that the gravity of a black hole in a parallel universe could then be felt in our own, if we knew how to look for it and in which direction to look.

As for bringing politics into the discussion, I'm afraid I did that by referring to our chosen 2-D leaders, tragically charting our course through a 3-D world.

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