Cubist Catechism
For the birthday of Georges Braque
From A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle:
“Now we will tesser, we will wrinkle again. Do you understand?”
“No,” Meg said flatly….
“Oh, dear,” Meg sighed. “I guess I am a moron. I just don’t get it.”
“That is because you think of space only in three dimensions,” Mrs. Whatsit told her….
Meg sighed. “Just explain it to me.”
“Okay,” Charles said. “What is the first dimension?”
“Well — a line.”
“Okay. And the second dimension?”
“Well, you’d square the line. A flat square would be in the second dimension.”
“And the third?”
“Well, you’d square the second dimension. Then the square wouldn’t be flat any more. It would have a bottom, and sides, and a top.”
“And the fourth?”
“Well, I guess if you want to put it into mathematical terms you’d square the square. But you can’t take a pencil and draw it the way you can the first three.”
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Ah! That is perfect! I was describing that *exact passage* to somebody just the other day. That was my first contact with the concept of “dimensions”, and L’Engle captured it very well. I still use her description to straighten out the idea of dimensions greater than three in my own head. It got me through Linear Algebra in university; people still look at me funny when I say I enjoyed it.
I’ve never seen an illustration like that, though. That is a bit wild.
Comment by iride — Tuesday, May 13, 2003 @ 2:29 pm
So, you CAN, apparently, pencil it out, but… you still have to think those other two dimensions. I wanna SEE one.
Comment by SuSu — Wednesday, May 14, 2003 @ 4:24 pm
Click here for the best way I know to see a tesseract.
Comment by m759 — Wednesday, May 14, 2003 @ 7:12 pm