by thigle » Fri Aug 12, 2005 7:45 am
wendy, i disagree a bit on this. so let's play with semantics:
if tangible proof of 4d is not possible, then not even tangible proof of 3d is possible (which I agree on, definitively)
I mean, noone ever touched a wood, or metal or stone or whatever AS SUCH. what we get through our interfaces is a bunch of signals, running through real/complex/hypercomplex and octonionic circuits for organization and coding, before(if at all) we become conscious of the sense-perception (whether that is a sight or touch or any of the classical 5 senses). so we don't touch, or see (or whatever empirical senses we use) things-as-such, i.e. even those sense-objects, that might be considered dwelling solely in 3d, we know just through inference. (if one accepts the empirical argument, which i don't)
so 'tangible proof' surely is a bad formulation, but not from the perspective of more-than-empiricism. i mean, you can not 'see' 4d-objects' and still, you do see them (through you imagination, which is 'seeing' too, but another level, or different kind of seeing). also, a different kind of touching, is needed to manipulate 4d objects in mind-scape, than manipulating objects in 3d by hand. you surely are damn right that this can not be experienced directly by holdin a quasicrystal, so my formulation was incorrect in this sense.
i just thought, that for someone, who gives more credit to rationale & 3d-empiricism, it might be a good thing to actually hold something, which is not explainaible from the inside of what he/she believes, (= from 3d ontology), and understand that THIS very thing that he/she is touching, IS actaully organized & connected with a level of existence that should not exist in exclusively-3d-rules world. so, yeah, this would not be a tangible proof, but rather a RATIONAL one, with the help of touch for giving it 'realness' for solely-on-3d-relying being.