What is a good way to talk about 4-dimensional world histories. In particular is ‘four dimensional world history’ an adequate way to express the concept? I of course just refer to that thing which contains up, down, left, right, forward, backward and later and earlier. This is the thing to which preferences apply, as well as related concepts such as ‘identity’. For the purpose of casual and efficient speech this seems like an adequate expression. Yet I have noticed that people who consider themselves to have high status in an area such as mathematics or physics sometimes like to jump on such casual expressions for the purpose of one-upmanship. I’m also somewhat idealistic with my own speech so knowingly saying technically incorrect things makes me uneasy.
There are of course advanced speculative physics theories which assume 13 or more dimensions and there are even some attempts to express physics without a ‘time’ dimension. I don’t wish to deny such theories. Stuff is more complicated than I am capable of imagining. But on the other hand the universe ‘adds up to normal’. There is a thing that looks kind of like a four dimensional universe for most practical purposes and that is what I wish to talk about. What I suppose I am actually talking about is “4 dimensional abstraction that can be mapped onto more complicated physical reality and which is sufficient to model the most interesting features”.
Is there a better term for that which I am referring to?
What is a good way to talk about 4-dimensional world histories. In particular is ‘four dimensional world history’ an adequate way to express the concept? I of course just refer to that thing which contains up, down, left, right, forward, backward and later and earlier. This is the thing to which preferences apply, as well as related concepts such as ‘identity’. For the purpose of casual and efficient speech this seems like an adequate expression. Yet I have noticed that people who consider themselves to have high status in an area such as mathematics or physics sometimes like to jump on such casual expressions for the purpose of one-upmanship. I’m also somewhat idealistic with my own speech so knowingly saying technically incorrect things makes me uneasy.
There are of course advanced speculative physics theories which assume 13 or more dimensions and there are even some attempts to express physics without a ‘time’ dimension. I don’t wish to deny such theories. Stuff is more complicated than I am capable of imagining. But on the other hand the universe ‘adds up to normal’. There is a thing that looks kind of like a four dimensional universe for most practical purposes and that is what I wish to talk about. What I suppose I am actually talking about is “4 dimensional abstraction that can be mapped onto more complicated physical reality and which is sufficient to model the most interesting features”.
Is there a better term for that which I am referring to?
What happens if you eschew the use of “dimension” altogether and simply talk about world histories, or chains of events?
Block universe perhaps?