Speculations on the Fourth Dimension: Selected Writings of Charles .H. Hinton [Paperback]

Charles H. Hinton (Author), Rudolf v. B. Rucker (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1980

Why should there be only three dimensions in space? Do we have a four-dimensional existence, but are we not conscious of it? If there are four dimensions, why not more than four - up to an infinite number? Pursuing such questions as these, Charles H. Hinton (1853-1907) speculated brilliantly on the idea of the fourth dimension, and in his best writings - which have here been brought together for the first time in one volume - he can finally be recognized as one of the most entertaining speculative thinkers of the turn of the century. Including material from all but three sections of Scientific Romances (1884-5), his most important writings from every stage of his career have been judiciously chosen and sympathetically edited for this anthology: "What is the Fourth Dimension?" (his first published essay), "A Plane World" (about life in two dimensions), "A Picture of Our Universe," "Casting Out the Self" (setting forth the ideas regarding his famous cubes), "Many Dimensions," "An Unfinished Communication," "A New Era of Thought," "The Fourth Dimension," "The Recognition of the Fourth Dimension," and "An Episode of Flatland," a delightful journey to the same fictional world that E. A. Abbott created in his classic book, Flatland. Hinton was one of the first mathematicians to write at length about the fourth dimension. He anticipated many of Einstein's discoveries, and - what's even more astonishing - he did so analogically, without the aid of any experimental data. Many of his ideas are still debated in scientific circles. In addition to making the selection for what promises to be the standard Hinton anthology, Professor Rudolf v.B. Rucker - well-known for his own speculations on the fourth dimension in Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension - has written a valuable introduction which assesses the scope of Hinton's contribution and outlines his entire career.

Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications Inc. (May 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486239160
• ISBN-13: 978-0486239163
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #823,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Which way is up?, April 5, 2004

By 

FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Speculations on the Fourth Dimension: Selected Writings of Charles .H. Hinton (Paperback)

Charles Hinton, a mathematician of the late nineteenth century, may well have been one of the few people, or perhaps the only person, to be able to think 'spatially' in four dimensions; he naturally had a difficult time trying to explain what his perceptions were, in much the same way that Flatlanders, when swept up above the plane of their existence into a strange new 'third' dimension, would have a problem explaining to those back on the two-dimension plane where exactly this 'place' or 'direction' was.

Edited by modern mathematician Rudy Rucker (whose brilliant book 'Infinity and the Mind' goes into another rarely-charted territory of speculative and interesting mathematics), this book contains several fascinating essays by Hinton on the development of ideas of multi-dimensionality that predate and anticipate much of twentieth century physics, both real and science fiction. One of the more unusual aspects of this is that Hinton arrived at his theories and calculations without any empirical or experimental data -- this is theoretical and speculative mathematics approaching its most pure form.

In one of Hinton's later essays, 'The Recognition of the Fourth Dimension', printed in the Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington in 1902, Hinton observes that this search for the physical reality of the fourth dimension can take place in two realms -- the very large and the very small; in other words, in the realms of cosmological astronomy and subatomic physics. This is an enormous leap of scientific intuition. However, Hinton describes the difficulty of 'locating' the fourth dimension -- it isn't anywhere one can point, but is rather part of all things at all times, and Hinton talks in terms of curvature (perhaps anticipating the idea of curved and warped spacetime), but not in the sense of a physical three-dimension curve.

One of the more fascinating ideas arising from a reading of these texts is that in trying to express the sense of a fourth dimension to typical three-dimensional readers (as it were), they are yet again reduced to a two-dimensional representation due to the necessary limitations of words and graphics on paper. Drawing three-dimensional images on paper in two dimensions is difficult enough; to attempt to graphically represent yet another dimension creates a host of problems never quite overcome.

Two of the essays here, 'A Plane World' and 'An Episode of Flatland', both continue in that mythical two-dimensional land created by E.A. Abbott. These are fascinating glimpses of the creative way in which Hinton's mind worked, incorporating the mathematical and physical sciences with storylines and philosophy.

A fascinating text!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who are we?, July 21, 2003

By 

Venkataramana K. Murty "slickvik" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Speculations on the Fourth Dimension: Selected Writings of Charles .H. Hinton (Paperback)

In life's pursuit of knowledge, in the race for understanding our place in time and space, we have but a finite amount of time during which we observe a mere portal of the vastness of which are a part! This book exercizes the mind in new ways. I recommend it to anyone with interest in Philosphy, Mathematics, Epistemology, Technology, Business, or even LIFE!

vik.