clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

preface
XIX
shopping mall; to your family the next time you plunk down on the couch to
watch The X-Files, or when you can't seem to find your keys and wonder if they
have escaped your notice by temporarily retreating into the fourth dimension.
Whatever you believe about the possibility of a fourth dimension, the dimensional
analogies in this book raise questions about the way you see the world and will
therefore shape the way you think about the universe. For example, you will become
more conscious about what it means to visualize an abstract object in your mind.
By the time you've finished this book, you will be able to
• understand arcane concepts such as "degrees of freedom," "'hyperspheres,"
and "tesseracts."
• impress your friends with such terms as: "enantiomorphic," "extrinsic
geometry," "quaternions," "nonorientable surfaces," "Kaluza-Klein theory,"
and "Hinton cubes."
• write better science-fiction stories for shows such as Star Trek, The X-
Files, or The Outer Limits.
• conduct computer experiments dealing with several aspects of the fourth
dimension.
• understand humanity's rather limited view of hyperspace, and how
omniscient gods could reside in the fourth dimension while we are only
dimly aware of their existence.
• stuff a whale into a ten-dimensional sphere the size of a marble.
You might even want to go out and buy a CD of the music from the X-Files
TV show.
Let me remind you—as I do in many of my books — that humans are a
moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the Earth. Our minds have
not sufficiently evolved to comprehend all the mysteries of higher dimensions.
Our brains, which evolved to make us run from predators on the African grasslands,
may not permit us to understand four-dimensional beings or their
thought processes. Given this potential limitation, we hope and search for
knowledge and understanding. Any insights we gain as we investigate structures
in higher dimensions will be increasingly useful to future scientists, theologians,
philosophers, and artists. Contemplating the fourth dimension is as
startling and rewarding as seeing the Earth from space for the first time.
January 1999
Yorktown Heights, New York
C.A.P.