clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

preface
xiii
experiments with a new form of three-dimensional TV. Although the creature
is both wise and friendly, its visit to our world causes quite a pandemonium.
For decades, there have been many popular science books and sciencefiction
novels on the subject of the fourth dimension. My favorite science book
on the subject is Rudy Rucker's The Fourth Dimension, which covers an array
of topics on space and time. My favorite science-fiction story is Robert Heinlein's
"—And He Built a Crooked House," first published in 1940. It tells the
tale of a California architect who constructs a four-dimensional house. He
explains that a four-dimensional house would have certain advantages:
I'm thinking about a fourth spatial dimension, like length, breadth, and
thickness. For economy of materials and convenience of arrangement
you couldn't beat it. To say nothing of ground space—you could put
an eight-room house on the land now occupied by a one-room house.
Unfortunately, once the builder takes the new owners on a tour of the
house, they can't find their way out. Windows and doors that normally face the
outside now face inside. Needless to say, some very strange things happen to
the terrified people trapped in the house.
Many excellent books on the fourth dimension, are listed in the Further
Readings at the end of this book. So, why another book on higher-dimensional
worlds? I have found that many previous books on this subject lacked an
important element. They don't focus wholeheartedly on the physical appearance
of four-dimensional beings, what mischief and good they could do in our
world, and the religious implications of their penetration into our world. More
important, many prior books are also totally descriptive with no formulas for
readers to experiment with—not even simple formulas—or are so full of complicated
looking equations that students, computer hobbyists, and general
audiences are totally overwhelmed.
The fourth dimension need not remain confined to Hollywood and the realm
of science fiction, beyond the range of exciting experiment and careful thought.
Many of the ideas, thought exercises, and numerical experiments in this book are
accessible to both students and seasoned scientists. A few pieces of computational
recipes are included so that computer hobbyists can explore higher-dimensional
worlds. But those of you with no interest in computing can easily skip these sections
and investigate the mental realms, unaided by computation. In this book, I'll
discuss such concepts as "degrees of freedom" and then gradually work my way up
to more sophisticated concepts such as the possibility of stuffing huge whales into
tiny four-dimensional spheres. The Appendices discuss a number of stimulating