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En Garde, whole no. 16, January 1946
Page 11
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page 11. SPACE AND HYPER-SPACE By Chandler Davis EDITOR'S FOREWORD: This article is the first of a proposed series. It is our belief that the author has something to say, and is qualified to say it. The article deals with matters which should be of great interest to fans. However, as the reader gets into the article and begins to see the diagrams and bits of math, he will probably tend to shy away. The purpose of this foreword is to urge the reader to stick with it. The article contains nothing beyond the grasp of one willing to devote a little attention to what he is reading. With no more knowledge of math that a high-school course in algebra and geometry studied twenty years ago, and largely forgotten since, the editor was quite able to understand what follows without trouble. You can too! And your comments are anxiously solicited, and will be more than appreciated. I As much nonesense has been written in stefnal publications about this little matter of dimensions as about any phase of modern science. Pretty near the only correct statement that has seen print (if we except a few articles such as ASF's Unseen Tools) is that the world which our senses perceive contains three spatial dimensions. Most of the rest has been hogwash, or at best misleading half-truth. The situation arouses my crusading spirit to such an extent that I really wish I could sit down and go through vector space theory, Riemannian geometry, relativity, and some statistical mechanics right here. But I can't. I'll have to make the best of my limited time, patience, and knowledge, and simply give the subject a rough going over. First I"ll list the commonest boners. 1) Reference is frequently made to possible worlds existing "in the 4th dimension". This atrocity is committed less in bona fide s-f than in the semi-literate fields of fantasy and wierd stories (lay that pistol down, Searles!), but it sure is an atrocity. Anyone who has the least intuitive understanding of the concept of dimension can see that a BEM existing in the 4th dimension alone, that is, only 1
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page 11. SPACE AND HYPER-SPACE By Chandler Davis EDITOR'S FOREWORD: This article is the first of a proposed series. It is our belief that the author has something to say, and is qualified to say it. The article deals with matters which should be of great interest to fans. However, as the reader gets into the article and begins to see the diagrams and bits of math, he will probably tend to shy away. The purpose of this foreword is to urge the reader to stick with it. The article contains nothing beyond the grasp of one willing to devote a little attention to what he is reading. With no more knowledge of math that a high-school course in algebra and geometry studied twenty years ago, and largely forgotten since, the editor was quite able to understand what follows without trouble. You can too! And your comments are anxiously solicited, and will be more than appreciated. I As much nonesense has been written in stefnal publications about this little matter of dimensions as about any phase of modern science. Pretty near the only correct statement that has seen print (if we except a few articles such as ASF's Unseen Tools) is that the world which our senses perceive contains three spatial dimensions. Most of the rest has been hogwash, or at best misleading half-truth. The situation arouses my crusading spirit to such an extent that I really wish I could sit down and go through vector space theory, Riemannian geometry, relativity, and some statistical mechanics right here. But I can't. I'll have to make the best of my limited time, patience, and knowledge, and simply give the subject a rough going over. First I"ll list the commonest boners. 1) Reference is frequently made to possible worlds existing "in the 4th dimension". This atrocity is committed less in bona fide s-f than in the semi-literate fields of fantasy and wierd stories (lay that pistol down, Searles!), but it sure is an atrocity. Anyone who has the least intuitive understanding of the concept of dimension can see that a BEM existing in the 4th dimension alone, that is, only 1
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