Three is such a beautiful, magical number. It is the smallest amount of points needed, in order to create a stable structure such as a table. It doesn't matter the size of the legs or the distance between those legs, that structure will stand straight. Furthermore, it is the world we live in consciously. A cube has 3 sides: Lengths, Width and Height. The three basic dimensions that describe our mortal world. Simple, right? Elementary geometry. And I promise, the only geometry you will need to get through this work of words. Everything you can see around you right now, has those 3 dimensions visibly displayed. Your smartphone, your coffee cup, your lamp, your cat and all the parts that make your lamp and your cat, have 3 measurable dimensions. No seriously, take your ruler and start measuring. You will not be able to measure more, or less than, those three dimensions.
Unless, of course, you are one of those smart arse kind of gits, and try to measure your mirror's reflection. Yup! There's a physical manifestation of a world that exists solely in 2 dimensions. Yes, you can measure the depth of the mirror itself, but not the reflection. But besides reflections, what other examples of 2D worlds do we have? Well, until September 7th 1927, there were no other 2D worlds we could observe. Nothing other than reflections on mirrors, lakes, and other shiny surfaces. But on that faithful day, Philo Taylor Farnsworth, a twenty-one-year! old inventor, presented to the world the first sighting of the television. A rudimentary form of it, but a TV nonetheless.
What incredible devices these screens are. They are now able to show us some of our most cherished memories, illustrate fiction stories in definition as good as reality, without even the slightest measurable depth. Wide as an ocean, deep as... well nothing, really.
So, we now understand what our 3D world looks like, and you are clearly reading this on a 2D projection. What about 1D? Well, the famously infamous Neil deGrease Tyson would suggest that a 1D world is a single point. Like many of his statements, he couldn't be more wrong. Because you see, even a point must have a length and a height, no matter how small they are, they can be measured if you just get a powerful enough lens. And if it's a point made of coal on paper, or ink or whatever physical medium you choose to write it in, it will even have a third dimension. Tiny, but there nonetheless.
I spent years, decades even thinking and thinking and thinking of where can one observe a single dimensional world. How can one imagine a 1D world. Oh God! Without a second dimension, one could not possibly think of seeing a single dimension... Did you get it yet? Why don't you THINK about it for another minute?
That's right! Your thoughts are a perfect example of a single dimensional world. No measurable dimensions in either three, but they undeniably exist. There they are right now, in your head, illustrating the words you are reading in front of you. Yet your thoughts bear no weight, no length, height or depth. I'm not saying your thoughts can't be deep, just that they can't be measured. And yes, the electrical impulses your neurons transmit have dimensions, but your thoughts are not pulses, are they? They are pictures, smells, sounds of places that have been, are and are yet to be. All that information, lying in a universe accessible to you and you alone. They exist, in a dimension that cannot be measured. But they exist nonetheless.
That is the first dimension, one that cannot be measured in either length, width or height, but it contains just as much information as the observable universe. Arguably so.
Take a moment, light up a cigarette if you're a smoker. Get a breath of fresh air if you're not, let this all sink in, as we are about to stretch that brain of yours even further.
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