Our sensory organs are created or have evolved to receive the stimuli from the external world in a predefined manner. By sensory organs, I refer to the organs devised for sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. We, the Homo sapiens, have an upright spine, on which rests the head with most of the sensory organs viz. Eyes, Ears, Tongue, and Nose placed symmetrically. The sense of touch is spread out all across the body in the form of external texture – the skin. Let’s take our eyes for instance and try to understand the concept of sight.
Imagine, you are holding a cube and looking upon it (A cube is a six sided structure. A square which is stretched equidistantly in the dimension of depth). When you look at the cube holding it right in front of your eyes, you’d be able to see just a square. This happens because you are getting a front view of the object alone. The front view gives you the information of length and breadth but the information of depth is lost. This is very similar to seeing a picture of somebody or something. When you see the picture of a person, you will be able to view the length and breadth of her face but will not be able to judge the features of her face i.e. how long is her nose or how deep are the sockets of her eyes or how protruding are her lips. The picture presents the two dimensional qualities of someone or something, though the beauty of the specimen can be evaluated but a very important dimension remains elusive to the sensory vision of the humans.
The three dimensional figure will be needed to be judged by either going around the specimen 360 degrees or if it is smaller then you can hold it up in your hand and turn it around so that your sight is able to see all the dimensions the specimen that you are holding. While shopping, it is our general tendency to lift an object that we wish to purchase and rotate it around our eyes to get a better view of the figure that the object carries. This helps us to decide if the object is symmetrical along each curvature or side thus describing its quality. If we hold a glass or a jar that we wish to view entirely then it is never possible to see it from a single point of view – which in this case would be the front view.
We human beings are three dimensional beings and therefore we appreciate 3 dimensional bodies or objects. Hypothetically, if there is a species which is two dimensional in nature – it means that this species can only view the length and breadth of the object and does not possess the sensory organ to see the depth dimension that the object being viewed holds. This species can never comprehend the way the 3 dimensional object actually looks because it will only be able to see the 2 out of the 3 parts that actually exists. It is very synonymous to the blind men trying to figure out how the elephant looks like. Every blind person touching a certain body part of the elephant imagines the elephant to be an animal of a certain quality and which is completely different from the analysis of another blind man making effort to visualise the elephant by holding another of its body part. The blind man touching the ears of the elephant will equate the mammal to be like a huge hand held fan or cloth like surface and the other blind man holding its trunk will be certain that the elephant is some kind of a huge flexible rounded pipe. In short, the blind men are not equivalently privy to the other parts (dimensions) of the beautiful beast and therefore make assumptions treating them as facts.
Similarly, if we return back to the 2 dimensional species who cannot view the 3rd dimension (just like another body part of the elephant) will take it for a fact that the 3 dimensional human beings do not look the way we do, since they are unable to comprehend the figure that they are viewing due to the limitations of their sensory organs.
Now, let’s take it a bit further – what if there exists a fourth dimension? In such a case, human beings will not be able to understand the 4 the dimension since we lack the sight to look beyond the 3rd dimension. Our predicament, thus, will be very much similar to the 2 dimensional species observing the 3 dimensional object. If the entire planet of ours or the solar system or the universe is beyond 3 dimensions then be rest assured that our understanding of the celestial bodies are limited owing to the handicap which our sensory organs presents us with. The way we see the world around us might be an absolute myth because we see it the way we perceive not because the way it actually is! Perhaps, this could be the scientific representation of the wise man’s truth that everything that surrounds us is a myth! Food for thought.
Thanks for reading.
