Hinton - The Fourth Dimension.pdf

CHAPTER VIII
THE USE OF FOUR DIMENSIONS IN
THOUGHT
HAVING held before ourselves this outlines of a conjecture
of the world as four-dimensional, having roughly thrown
together those facts of movement which we can see apply
to our actual experience, let us pass to another branch
of our subject.
The engineer uses drawings, graphical constructions,
in a variety of manners. He has, for instance, diagrams
which represent the expansion of steam, the efficiency
of his valves. These exist alongside the actual plans of
his machines. They are not the pictures of anything
really existing, but enable him to think about the relations
which exist in his mechanics.
And so, besides showing us the actual existence of that
world which lies beneath the one of visible movements,
four-dimensional space enables us to make idea constructions
which serve to represent the relations of things,
and throw what would otherwise be obscure into a definite
and suggestive form.
From amidst the great variety of instances which lies
before me I will select two, one dealing with a subject
of slight intrinsic interest, which however gives within
a limited field a striking example of the method
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