tangible proof of realness of 4dimensionality ?

[thigle]

quasicrystals are obvious violation of 3d crystallographic restriction. given their structure, they should not exist in 3d. it seems their lattices are projections of higher-dimensional lattices, into 3d.

although proof of existence of 4d is irrelevant to me, as it's simply omnipresent, some people would like to see tangible 'proof' of it. however, if i were in such a materialist mindframe, quasicrystals would definitely make my doubts drop.

what do you think ?

[wendy]

That quasi-crystals are a voilation of crystalographic principals suggests that the latter makes excessive assumptions. Quasi-crystals can indeed be represented by a subspace of a higher-dimensional lattice, for which the projected coordinates are sparse.

The ones that look more beautiful tend to have the non-projected coordinates in tight balls.

Tangable proof of 4d is not possible, because we can't touch it. Like complex numbers, it does not have to exist to be useful: complex numbers are used in the electrical world a lot.

W

[thigle]

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.

[wendy]

Reality is an illusion.

But it's a three-dimensional illusion, and it follows rules well enough for us to glark meaning from it. From what i have seen, nothing exists in our rule-set that requires anything than the horochorix we live in.

For instance, nothing equates to the crossing from hyperspace of higher dimensions. The illusions of gods and demons are three-dimensional. Gods and demons live among us, ie in our three-dimensional existance, and are visualised as having a permanent outline in three dimensions.

What differs is the frequencies these things be it. Many are so etheral they pass through us: but their form is a three-dimensional entity, not a four-dimensional one.

To appreciate this, you must look at how three dimensions reduces to two, and then compare how these images vary in a way that three-dimensional things do not.

None the same, the absence of tangable proof, or proof of any kind, does not divest the utility of the study. It helps us understand the relations of things.

To the extent that i can see four or five or six dimensional things, is that i can hold the meaning of these things in my mind, and work with them.

Understand what vision is. It is not like a television, where one puts up so many dots and does it all again. The eye dances from point to point, the image is revealed by its edges, more than anything else. In four dimensions, the eye moves not over an area but a volume. You build the thing from looking at its peicewise constructions. The eye follows contours, and you see the whole from its parts.

One of the inspiring views i have of six dimensions is to look down the vertex figure of a hyperbolic apeiroecton, and see the entirity of 6d from afar.

It is of course, possible to describe the fourth dimension some kind of reality. For the most part, it does better to introduce it by parts, and not try to assert things that no orbits are possible.

My understanding of how things rotate in four dimensions, comes from watching the night sky in four dimensions. I essentially proposed a geocentric model, with the sun orbiting on the zodiac, but added four dimensionality to it. Most of the idioms one understands, but it allows one to feel the rotation.

The failure of a radiant field to produce stable orbits is not a major hinderance to 4d, it just means that we need to look elsewhere. That there is no cross-product of two vectors, means that we need a third vector to stabilise things.

Denying the existance of a fourth dimension on the strength of failure of a radiant field to give meaningfully stable orbits is pretty much sidestepping the issue.

W