Project Gutenberg's Four-Dimensional Vistas, by Claude Fayette Bragdon

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Title: Four-Dimensional Vistas

Author: Claude Fayette Bragdon

Release Date: April 4, 2004 [EBook #11906]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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FOUR-DIMENSIONAL
VISTAS

by

Claude Bragdon

[Illustration]

New York

"_Perception has a destiny_."
_Emerson_.

INTRODUCTION

There are two notable emancipations of the mind from the tyranny of
mere appearances that have received scant attention save from
mathematicians and theoretical physicists.

In 1823 Bolyai declared with regard to Euclid's so-called axiom of
parallels, "I will draw two lines through a given point, both of
which will be parallel to a given line." The drawing of these lines
led to the concept of the curvature of space, and this to the idea
of _higher_ space.

The recently developed Theory of Relativity has compelled the
revision of the time concept as used in classical physics. One
result of this has been to introduce the notion of _curved_ time.

These two ideas, of curved time and higher space, by their very
nature are bound to profoundly modify human thought. They loosen the
bonds within which advancing knowledge has increasingly labored,
they lighten the dark abysses of consciousness, they reconcile the
discoveries of Western workers with the inspirations of Eastern
dreamers; but best of all, they open vistas, they offer "glimpses
that may make us less forlorn."

CONTENTS

I. THE QUEST OF FREEDOM

The Undiscovered Country--Miracles--The Failure of Common Sense--The
Function of Science--Mathematics--Intuition--Our Sense of Space--The
Subjectivity of Space--The Need of an Enlarged Space-Concept.

II. THE DIMENSIONAL LADDER

Learning to Think in Terms of Spaces--From the Cosmos to the
Corpuscle--And Beyond--Evolution as Space-Conquest--Dimensional
Sequences--Man the Geometer--Higher, and Highest, Space.

III. PHYSICAL PHENOMENA

Looking for the Greater in the Less--Symmetry--Other Allied
Phenomena--Isomerism--The Or