clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

CONCLUDING REMARKS 167
swered. I hope that an analogous situation exists in the physical world.
If my view of the future is correct, it means that the world of physics
and astronomy is also inexhaustible; no matter how far we go into the
future, there will always be new things happening, new information
coming in, new worlds to explore, a constantly expanding domain of
life, consciousness, and memory.
Let's end this book at a point from where we started. Throughout, I have
referred to clergyman Edwin Abbott Abbott's 2-D world called Flatland. The
book describing it is both scientific and mystical. I wonder if Abbott actually
thought that the fourth dimension was the key to understanding God. I am
doubtful. In his book The Spirit on the Waters, written nearly ten years after
Flatland, Abbott recounts Flatland's climactic scene in which the 2-D hero is
confronted by the changing shapes of a 3-D being as it passes through Flatland.
The Flatlander does not worship this being because of its God-like powers.
Rather, Abbott suggests that miraculous powers do not necessarily signify
any of the moral and spiritual qualities required for worship and adoration.
Abbott concludes:
This illustration from four dimensions, suggesting other illustrations
derivable from mathematics, may serve a double purpose in our present
investigation. On the one hand it may lead us to vaster views of
possible circumstances and existence; on the other hand it may teach
us that the conception of such possibilities cannot, by any direct path,
bring us closer to God. Mathematics may help us to measure and
weigh the planets, to discover the materials of which they are composed,
to extract light and warmth from the motion of water and to
dominate the material universe; but even if by these means we could
mount up to Mars or hold converse with the inhabitants of Jupiter or
Saturn, we should be no nearer to the divine throne, except so far as
these new experiences might develop in our modesty, respect for facts,
a deeper reverence for order and harmony, and a mind more open to
new observations and to fresh inferences from old truths.
Abbott believed that study of the fourth dimension is important in expanding
our imagination, increasing our reverence for the Universe, and increasing
our humility—perhaps the first steps in any attempt to understand the mind
of God.