The Fourth Dimension

[Kaje977]

Alright. An interesting topic. Let's start with the basics first:

What constitutes the existence of a fourth dimension? It is not possible construct more than three perpendicular lines in one point. Our sensual intuition clearly prohibits that. This is an axiom of the a priori pure forms of (sensual) intuition of time and space. Modern mathematicians, interestingly, have still not figured out that they cannot turn a "logical" possibility into a real possibility. It's entirely feasible to construct this supposedly "4D" object within 3D Euclidean space with special translational functions of rotation, movement, etc. There would be no ontological difference. The hypercube/tesseract is not a four dimensional object, but a three dimensional one. And "space" does not have dimensions. Space itself is a pure form of our sensual intuition/perception. Bodies within space have dimensions, not space itself.

[Cleric]

Alright. An interesting topic. Let's start with the basics first:

What constitutes the existence of a fourth dimension? It is not possible construct more than three perpendicular lines in one point. Our sensual intuition clearly prohibits that. This is an axiom of the a priori pure forms of (sensual) intuition of time and space. Modern mathematicians, interestingly, have still not figured out that they cannot turn a "logical" possibility into a real possibility. It's entirely feasible to construct this supposedly "4D" object within 3D Euclidean space with special translational functions of rotation, movement, etc. There would be no ontological difference. The hypercube/tesseract is not a four dimensional object, but a three dimensional one. And "space" does not have dimensions. Space itself is a pure form of our sensual intuition/perception. Bodies within space have dimensions, not space itself.

Hello Kaje,

Yes, trying to picture a geometric fourth dimension is an impossibility. But it is worth looking more closely why this is the case.

I think I understand what you mean with your last statement but maybe we can make it even more precise. We can first try to see how exactly we reach the idea of a dimension. We can try to imagine a hypothetical 'blank' human state where we start with our sensory experiences but without yet having thought about them. For example, think about the experiences of cold and hot. These feel quite differently. If we only know them as two distinct states - that is, somehow our experience switches immediately between cold to hot - it may never occur to us that they may have something in common. It would be not that different from switching from a state with a visual perception to one with an auditory - there's no apparent connection between the two. It is only when we experience the gradual change of the sense of warmth that we gradually learn about their relationship. Now our thinking has built for itself a qualitative dimension. If we tell someone who only knows hot and cold as distinct experiences and nothing in between, to think of lukewarm, he will simply not know 'in what direction' to seek that experience. Those who know the gradations of warmth, however, can easily move their imagination along this 'axis'. In a way, we can move back and forth between first-person memory-like pictures of shivering or throwing away our clothes.

In this sense, a dimension is really an axis for our cognition, along which we can structure our mental and memory images. When we say 'axis' this doesn't mean that we should imagine a geometric line. This is obvious in the case of warmth. When we imagine that we shiver or that we are hot, we don't move anywhere, we are always at the center, yet our imaginative state transforms between two poles. So it's rather these two poles that give us the sense of dimension.

What about spatial dimensions? We can approach the problem similarly. If we imagine that we have no understanding of space, our visual field will look like an amalgamation of colorful blobs. It is only through experience that we learn that when we will our bodily movements in a certain way, certain colorful blobs grow larger and they can be tasted, smelled, etc. If we will our movements in a different way we can make the blobs shrink.

We can operate in this way quite instinctively and still do fine. We may never reach the conception of three-dimensional space. Yet, the more experience we gain with growing and shrinking colorful blobs, the more we attain to more expanded intuition for the way we can will our bodily movements in a way that we can manifest a desired configuration of blobs.

Then similarly to the temperature dimension, we can distinguish certain poles in which we can will the transformations of the blobs. The polarity of growing and shrinking we've already mentioned. But we can also distinguish willing that results in the blobs moving to the left or right, and up or down. Why exactly these polarities? Can't we make an axis that runs diagonally? Yes we can, there are infinite such axes that we can envision. Furthermore, for completeness, we should also include three other dimensions for rotation - turning around, looking up and down, and tilting our head left and right. Yet if we don't care about the direction in which we are facing, and only want to reach the blob, it turns out that three polarities are all that we need. Any blob can be reached if we are given instructions like "Take 5 steps to the left, 10 steps forward, and climb 3 steps on a ladder." We can include infinitely many directions, such as "take steps diagonally", etc., but if we pick less than three, there will be some blob configurations that will never be reachable.

The reason we can't picture a fourth spatial dimension is because we can't will the transformations of our bodily perceptions in any other way that is not already achievable through a combination of the three willing axes above. So when we are asked to imagine a fourth spatial dimension it's like telling us "Will your feet to make 4 steps in the direction that can't be reached through any combination of the three other directions you are familiar with." This is why we face the impossibility. It's exactly as if someone asks us to imagine a different kind of warmth that cannot be reached by traversing our familiar gradient.

For these reasons, instead of abusing our cognitive axes, we can try to see if there could be polarities of inner experience that haven't been sufficiently explored so far. One such polarity is the temporal contextuality of our inner life. Our cognition continuously moves among mental images referring to different scales of space and time. Naturally, we know only our middle scale (between small/fast, large/slow), where our real-time bodily life is experienced. But in our mental life we can move 'up' and 'down' along the axis of spacetime scales. If we observe our thinking life we'll easily see that everything that we think about can be related to a certain spacetime scale. For example, when we think about going on a vacation, we encompass in our mind mental images that refer to an interval of, say, one or two weeks. When we think of the workings of a microprocessor we need to scale up everything and slow it down in order to be able to work with it in our middle scale.

Thus, by learning to see how our existential movie can be 'analyzed' in such thoughts, ideas and intents that relate to various spacetime scales, we begin to sense a very definite 'axis' of our being, along which our mental life manifests. Just as it would be a kind of revelation if we have experienced only disconnected experiences of warmth and then we discover the inner axis along which we can order them, so we can experience a revelation in our cognitive life when we discover how we can traverse the spacetime scale gradient.

[Kaje977]

If we imagine that we have no understanding of space, our visual field will look like an amalgamation of colorful blobs.

This is false. We cannot imagine having no knowledge of space. We already have complete knowledge of the pure forms of intuition, they are a priori and they necessitate us continously. If this were not the case, you would (similar to Locke in his sensualism theory) make the mistake of concluding from a known effect (sensation) to an unknown cause (the body). Furthermore, the sentence "our visual field will look like an amalgamation of colorful blobs" is already a quantitative determination. The term “sensuous manifold” (to which you are referring here) may be conceived neither as order nor as disorder, neither as unity nor as plurality. For that would already be a categorical determination, and it is precisely this categorical determination, however, that makes a space (as an a priori concept) comprehensible to us. Nevertheless, it is already present, as an a priori representation, even if we have not yet formed a concept of it. Their a priori nature is revealed by the insight that they do not fall victim to the Humean problem of induction like many of the empirical hypotheses do, which are only falsifiable, but not verifiable. The a priori structures are not just thought within the assertoric mode, they are thought as being apodictically, universally true. Similar like the law of causality.

The only conceivable solution of the aforementioned problem (which Locke was trapped into) lies in the Copernican revolution of thought discovered by Kant, namely the reversal of the relation of the previous (incorrect) silent assumption that space and time are independent things in themselves. On the contrary: space and time belong entirely to us, as a priori representations. And they must, otherwise we would not immediately recognize bodies or even have any sensual experience at all. Kant has shown this by the way how they are the necessary conditions for the possibility of (empirical) experience.

I will try to make my train of thought clearer here:
a) The sentence: “Our space is three-dimensional” is wrong.
Three-dimensionality is no more a property of space than the terms “straight” and “curved” are (most people don't know that either, hence they mistake special relativity theory as an actual ontological description of space). Space has innumerable dimensions (eccentric spherical radii) from a point (center) (i.e. in relation to this point). If there is no three-dimensional space, then there is no multi-dimensional space either.

In truth, there is only one axiom on which the determination of size is based, and this is:
“In one point only three of the innumerable eccentric dimensional lines designated under a) are possible, which are perpendicular to one another"
(e.g. the possibility of constructing a right is also based on the principle of gradualness (category of quality). When the side is turned, it must also pass through the perpendicular line. This follows from the continuity to which the principle of gradualness is applicable)
By virtue of this axiom, the size of a part of space can be determined by three dimensional lines. This axiom, like all the others, is induced by the influence that empty space exerts on the conceptualizing, constructing power of judgment, and with it has also induced the impossibility of constructing more than three perpendicular lines in the same point.

If you dialectically turn this axiom into a property of space in order to arrive at an (apparent) class of spaces with more dimensions, then you are mistaken. The possibility or impossibility of constructing a figure in space never reflects a property of space! Figures can be derived from space, but space can never be derived from figures. You can't construct space from three dimensions, so you can't make a property out of them either (space is, after all, the very prerequisite for the construction of dimensional lines being possible at all, and not the other way around).

Now let us assume that four-dimensional space is a “logical possibility”.
a) But logical possibilities deal exclusively with “mere” concepts, and the study of such concepts, detached from intuition (the necessitating sensuality), is the essence of illusory logic or dialectics (an extremely dangerous cultural troublemaker).

Here, the sensual and individually given space is transformed into a mere concept, which is then made into a (non-inductive) generic concept in contradiction to the individually given sensual structure. With this freely invented generic concept of different spaces, one then associated the property of three- and further four-dimensionality and then pointed out that the latter property **did not logically contradict** this invented generic concept, that consequently the concept of a four-dimensional space was a logical possibility.

**But** where on earth does one get the realization that four-dimensionality does not contradict this generic term, since the object of this generic term is completely unknown?

So it is impossible to say whether a logical contradiction is excluded here! It is problematic/hypothetical even if one allows a space as a generic term. Because we only know one species of space. Our concept of space is based on only one single example. Yes, space is, as I just showed, even the condition for the presentation of individual objects. We can induce generic terms for dogs and cats, but not for the phoenix bird or for dragons. There is no generic term that includes different types of space. It's a fictitious invention.

b) A logical possibility does NOT belong in physics, or in science at all, but only a real, induced possibility.

The logical possibility, i.e. the absence of contradiction, is never the sufficient reason for the formation of a judgment, i.e. the copulation of two concepts, but only one of its conditions (conditio sine qua non, coefficient). Rather, according to the law of logic itself, the copula of two terms (as subject and predicate) must have a sufficient reason (the principle of sufficient reason), which excludes the opposite of the copula (the principle of the excluded middle).

A sufficient logical reason exists when the predicate can be derived from the subject (i.e. in the case of the analytical judgment, so that every logical insight must be analytical, i.e. can only be based on the principle of non-contradiction as the only reason). On the other hand, every synthetic copulation of concepts demands, according to the logic, **besides** the observance of the principle of non-contradiction, a sufficient reason according to the principle of reason, which lies **outside** the judgment, i.e. must be induced, i.e. must be a **real** possibility. The copulation of the synthetic concepts “space” and “three-dimensional” is induced by construction in reality. The copulation of the concepts “space” and “four-dimensional” is not inducible. It is invented a priori (in contradiction even to the empiricist dogma) by the invention of an unknowable subject concept, which is a concept without an object.

[Cleric]

This is false. We cannot imagine having no knowledge of space. We already have complete knowledge of the pure forms of intuition, they are a priori and they necessitate us continously. If this were not the case, you would (similar to Locke in his sensualism theory) make the mistake of concluding from a known effect (sensation) to an unknown cause (the body). Furthermore, the sentence "our visual field will look like an amalgamation of colorful blobs" is already a quantitative determination. The term “sensuous manifold” (to which you are referring here) may be conceived neither as order nor as disorder, neither as unity nor as plurality. For that would already be a categorical determination, and it is precisely this categorical determination, however, that makes a space (as an a priori concept) comprehensible to us. Nevertheless, it is already present, as an a priori representation, even if we have not yet formed a concept of it. Their a priori nature is revealed by the insight that they do not fall victim to the Humean problem of induction like many of the empirical hypotheses do, which are only falsifiable, but not verifiable. The a priori structures are not just thought within the assertoric mode, they are thought as being apodictically, universally true. Similar like the law of causality.

The only conceivable solution of the aforementioned problem (which Locke was trapped into) lies in the Copernican revolution of thought discovered by Kant, namely the reversal of the relation of the previous (incorrect) silent assumption that space and time are independent things in themselves. On the contrary: space and time belong entirely to us, as a priori representations. And they must, otherwise we would not immediately recognize bodies or even have any sensual experience at all. Kant has shown this by the way how they are the necessary conditions for the possibility of (empirical) experience.

Hi Kaje,
thanks for your elaborations. Yes, I agree with the above. I realize that my previous post must have sounded rather one-sidedly, as if I was implying the divorce between reality out there (whatever causes the color blobs) and our completely local and private cognitive frameworks. I completely acknowledge that what I have written can be seen in that way.

Yet my goal was different. I intended to only point at the practical experience of refining our intuition of the contents of our conscious experience. I hope you will agree that all those philosophical concepts that you elaborated above are not something that you were born with. Of course not. Even the idea of three-dimensional space was first conceived at some point in your life. Of course, you would say that this idea has not been conceived as some independent object in the human mind but its intuition has been always present in the background of our existence. And not only that it is present as some intuition about space, but this dynamic intuition is the true essence of space, it is what space is in its most fundamental nature. At some point in our life we simply mature enough that we can bring that background intuition into focus and can anchor it in a symbol - for example, the very word "space". Clearly, the word "space", as a purely auditory phenomenon, is a very different kind of experience. We experience it either when we will the movements of our larynx such that the sound vibrations of "s-p-a-c-e" are produced, or we simply replicate that physical experience as if by remembering it in our imagination (the basis of verbal thinking). In any case, this speech experience serves only as an anchor point where the background intuition is focused (and we call that focused intuition the concept).

I also agree with your other elaboration on how the geometrical fourth dimension is conceived as something completely abstract. This is what I also tried to show but it was overshadowed by the impression that the conception of space is divorced from reality.

So we are on the same page that our concepts 'condense' from the intuitive nature of reality itself. This reality is our own conscious essence, except that the representations that we behold as the various kind of inner phenomena, initially meet us as something obscure. An example that was given here recently is to see how it feels when we are confronted, for example, with Arabic script (in case that we do not know it). In a certain sense, the concepts and ideas about the writing system itself and further about what meaning is encoded through that system, can be understood to exist in the background, yet we need to go through a laborious inner development before we can bring them into focus. It is somewhat similar with the total representation of existence that we call the contents of our inner experience. There's something in the intuitive background of this existence that can elucidate the representations but our inner apparatus should be adjusted, the light of intuition should be properly refracted and focused such that when we contemplate certain representations we could clearly recognize the intuitive intents that work in it.

Now a major question around which most of the discussions here revolve, is whether our human experience is locked into the intellectual plane where we can know only intuition focused into forms that we know from our bodily life (visual, verbal, tactile, etc.). In other words, we categorize and conceptualize the representations according to the background of intuition that is brought to focus and anchored in visual, verbal and other symbols (whose perceptual nature is borrowed from memories from our bodily life). Yet, as soon as we hold on to these mineral-like symbols in our mind (most commonly verbal symbols), they are already dead. For example, even though we can feelingly unite with the intuitive nature of space as the background of our existence, as soon as we pronounce the word "space" and focus that all-encompassing intuition into it, we hold in our consciousness something that has precipitated from living reality in a way analogous to the shedding of dead skin cells from the living body.

In a Kantian spirit, this is not seen as a problem but as a fundamental limitation of our human condition. In a sense, our intellectual life lives as if on the horizon of a blackhole. In our deep feeling intuition we grasp that we are one with the full volume of reality, yet at our intellectual plane we can hold on only to dead symbols tearing from the horizon.

So the pressing question for humanity in our age is whether our cognitive life is truly constrained to only know itself on 'our side' of the horizon, where the mineral-like symbols of the universal intuitions precipitate? Or the symbols depend on the kind of inner activity we perform? Could it be that we can know ourselves as an active spirit within the so far unknown depth of the intuitive Cosmos, as long as we can discover the corresponding degrees of freedom of our meaningful spiritual activity? What is your stance on this?

[AshvinP]

The only conceivable solution of the aforementioned problem (which Locke was trapped into) lies in the Copernican revolution of thought discovered by Kant, namely the reversal of the relation of the previous (incorrect) silent assumption that space and time are independent things in themselves. On the contrary: space and time belong entirely to us, as a priori representations. And they must, otherwise we would not immediately recognize bodies or even have any sensual experience at all. Kant has shown this by the way how they are the necessary conditions for the possibility of (empirical) experience.

Kaje,

I would like to draw your attention to N.O. Lossky and his book, The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge: An Epistemological Inquiry. He deals specifically and at length with the Kantian revolution. He leads us very precisely and experientially to where a certain misunderstanding crept in that most people are unaware of. Here is an excerpt:

It should be noted that whatever view they may take of the real object, these philosophical thinkers are compelled to admit that the object apprehended, as it is in consciousness, must be an experience compared with other experiences, and must lie within the process of comparing itself. Suppose we affirm that 'every event has a cause'... [discussion of empiricists and rationalists]. According to the Kantians, when we affirm the presence of a causal connection, the object known is not external to the process of knowing; it is nearer to it, indeed, than the intuitional theory takes it to be; for in the Kantian view, the object is itself knowledge, it is itself a cognitive process (a synthesis according to the category of causality). Still, without doubt, every Kantian would agree that the judgment 'this is a case of causal connection' can only be made if the causal synthesis is not merely present but also distinguished from syntheses according to the categories of substance, reciprocity, etc., and that in this act of comparing and judging the causal synthesis itself serves as the object known.

If knowledge be, then, an experience compared with other experiences, and if the object apprehended be the experience that is being compared, it follows that the object is known as it is in itself. What is present in knowledge is not a copy, symbol, or appearance of the thing that is to be known, but the thing as it really exists. A number of important consequences can at once be drawn, but their epistemological significance cannot be fully estimated until a misunderstanding which may arise from the above definition of knowledge has been removed. Knowing is always taken to be an activity of the self. But when the object present in knowledge is the world of the not-self, how can the latter be given to the knowing subject as it exists in reality?

Finding the source of this experiential distinction between the 'self' and the 'not-self' is critical for orienting to whether the latter can be known in the same way that we know the object of our cognitive process.

[Federica]

I haven't had time for this so far, but I want to pin this here, for the time being. Part 2 of the fourth dimension series with which I started this thread has been posted:

[AshvinP]

I haven't had time for this so far, but I want to pin this here, for the time being. Part 2 of the fourth dimension series with which I started this thread has been posted:

Thanks, this is another fantastic intuitive exploration of our real-time imaginative activity through artistic mathematical symbols! So much of what he described could yet again be metaphorically applied to the phenomenological presentations of Steiner and Cleric, for ex., and in a quite direct way. He is literally condensing his intuition of real-time imaginative activity into artistic visualizations, although he is not quite conscious of that fact.

I think it would be interesting to present the author with the phenomenological exploration of the dimensions that Cleric outlined earlier on this thread. I wonder if it would strike any deep resonance with what he has been intuitively exploring, or whether he has externalized the dimensions to such an extent that it would seem preposterous (or irrelevant) to him.

[Federica]

The next episode is out. I think it works well to illustrate, among other things, what Steiner explained in the second lecture of his series on the fourth dimension: "Now, humans can perceive their three dimensions. If we reason correctly, we must say to ourselves: Just as a one-dimensional being can only perceive points, a two-dimensional being only straight lines, and a three-dimensional being only surfaces, so a being that perceives three dimensions must itself be a four-dimensional being."

[AshvinP]

The next episode is out. I think it works well to illustrate, among other things, what Steiner explained in the second lecture of his series on the fourth dimension: "Now, humans can perceive their three dimensions. If we reason correctly, we must say to ourselves: Just as a one-dimensional being can only perceive points, a two-dimensional being only straight lines, and a three-dimensional being only surfaces, so a being that perceives three dimensions must itself be a four-dimensional being."

What seems to be missing in the video, as to be expected, is a truly phenomenological perspective on dimensional experience. Ted speaks of how we only perceive 2D objects, i.e., we have never actually perceived a cube in our lives, but this treats "perception" too narrowly in terms of only visual perception, rather than the whole spectrum of inner content that feeds back on our physical movements. I have been reading through a great book on the inner experience of evolution, suggested by MS, which also briefly discusses this dimensional experience.


To explain natural phenomena, one must seek out the forces by which they are effected. For the phenomena face the observer finished and strange; one does not know how they came into being. It is different with the forces. Everyone has a concept of what ‘survival instinct’ and ‘struggle for existence’ mean, because one can comprehend them in inner experience. The phenomena can be looked at only from the outside, but the forces causing them can be experienced internally, namely by identifying oneself with them, by ‘recreating’ the phenomena internally, so to speak. In every explanation of nature, therefore, there are components that make the becoming of the phenomena as comprehensible as if one had created them oneself.

Concepts always contain a volitional part, originating from inner experience. A simple example: A rolling billiard ball meets a stationary one, the latter also comes into motion. I know that I myself can set a thing in motion by pushing it. The terms ‘rest’, ‘motion’ and ‘push’ come from experiences I have through my own body. By associating the perception of the balls with these terms, I understand the external process. The same is true for seemingly abstract concepts. For example, I can form the idea of the three-dimensional space because I experience the three dimensions as forces through my own corporeality: the vertical in the uprightness, the horizontal in the left-right, the depth dimension in the front-back. Even in the abstracted concept of space an inner will part still remains alive, in that I can imagine myself in any point of the space, always holding the zero point in mind and referring to it from everywhere. These are all wilful gestures, which one carries out inwardly or at least carried out when one formed the concept for the first time. However, these inner gestures usually escape attention. (One can observe them when people explain concepts, since they usually show the volitional dynamics with their hands). Finally, concepts such as ‘life’, ‘development’, ‘type’, ‘chance’, ‘meaning’, ‘consciousness’, etc. are also deposited with inner experiences, but they are not so easily uncovered by simple spatial volitional movements. We will see later that such concepts are nevertheless based on inner experiences, but on experiences in thinking.

Hueck, Christoph J.. Evolution in the Double Stream of Time: An Inner Morphology of Organic Thought (pp. 31-32). epubli. Kindle Edition.


Unfortunately, Ted never responded to my previous email about our intuitive experience of the spatial dimensions and the potential '4th dimension' of deeper ideational scales, which, however, cannot be discovered through the naturally given movements of physical life, but only the freely cultivated movements of imaginative life.

[Federica]

The next episode is out. I think it works well to illustrate, among other things, what Steiner explained in the second lecture of his series on the fourth dimension: "Now, humans can perceive their three dimensions. If we reason correctly, we must say to ourselves: Just as a one-dimensional being can only perceive points, a two-dimensional being only straight lines, and a three-dimensional being only surfaces, so a being that perceives three dimensions must itself be a four-dimensional being."

What seems to be missing in the video, as to be expected, is a truly phenomenological perspective on dimensional experience. Ted speaks of how we only perceive 2D objects, i.e., we have never actually perceived a cube in our lives, but this treats "perception" too narrowly in terms of only visual perception, rather than the whole spectrum of inner content that feeds back on our physical movements. I have been reading through a great book on the inner experience of evolution, suggested by MS, which also briefly discusses this dimensional experience.


To explain natural phenomena, one must seek out the forces by which they are effected. For the phenomena face the observer finished and strange; one does not know how they came into being. It is different with the forces. Everyone has a concept of what ‘survival instinct’ and ‘struggle for existence’ mean, because one can comprehend them in inner experience. The phenomena can be looked at only from the outside, but the forces causing them can be experienced internally, namely by identifying oneself with them, by ‘recreating’ the phenomena internally, so to speak. In every explanation of nature, therefore, there are components that make the becoming of the phenomena as comprehensible as if one had created them oneself.

Concepts always contain a volitional part, originating from inner experience. A simple example: A rolling billiard ball meets a stationary one, the latter also comes into motion. I know that I myself can set a thing in motion by pushing it. The terms ‘rest’, ‘motion’ and ‘push’ come from experiences I have through my own body. By associating the perception of the balls with these terms, I understand the external process. The same is true for seemingly abstract concepts. For example, I can form the idea of the three-dimensional space because I experience the three dimensions as forces through my own corporeality: the vertical in the uprightness, the horizontal in the left-right, the depth dimension in the front-back. Even in the abstracted concept of space an inner will part still remains alive, in that I can imagine myself in any point of the space, always holding the zero point in mind and referring to it from everywhere. These are all wilful gestures, which one carries out inwardly or at least carried out when one formed the concept for the first time. However, these inner gestures usually escape attention. (One can observe them when people explain concepts, since they usually show the volitional dynamics with their hands). Finally, concepts such as ‘life’, ‘development’, ‘type’, ‘chance’, ‘meaning’, ‘consciousness’, etc. are also deposited with inner experiences, but they are not so easily uncovered by simple spatial volitional movements. We will see later that such concepts are nevertheless based on inner experiences, but on experiences in thinking.

Hueck, Christoph J.. Evolution in the Double Stream of Time: An Inner Morphology of Organic Thought (pp. 31-32). epubli. Kindle Edition.


Unfortunately, Ted never responded to my previous email about our intuitive experience of the spatial dimensions and the potential '4th dimension' of deeper ideational scales, which, however, cannot be discovered through the naturally given movements of physical life, but only the freely cultivated movements of imaginative life.

Yes, he keeps the exploration entirely within the limits of visual perception. To be fair, that's where he sets the goal from the beginning: visualizing and seeing, not perception at large. He frames the 4D inquiry within clear sensory boundaries, with no larger phenomenological aspiration - he wants to be clever in that space (in the Steiner sense, and he is). There's no attempt to do a phenomenology of human spacial experience.


The book you quote looks very interesting, thanks! This is very well said:
"The phenomena can be looked at only from the outside, but the forces causing them can be experienced internally, namely by identifying oneself with them, by ‘recreating’ the phenomena internally, so to speak. In every explanation of nature, therefore, there are components that make the becoming of the phenomena as comprehensible as if one had created them oneself."

With the medicine lectures in mind, I would even go further: in every phenomenon of nature, there are components that make the becoming of the phenomena comprehensible because one creates it polarically within oneself. The "as if" is indeed an actuality.

"Finally, concepts such as ‘life’, ‘development’, ‘type’, ‘chance’, ‘meaning’, ‘consciousness’, etc. are also deposited with inner experiences, but they are not so easily uncovered by simple spatial volitional movements. We will see later that such concepts are nevertheless based on inner experiences, but on experiences in thinking."

Here too I would perhaps go further: such concepts are based on inner experiences in thinking and, in a sense, these inner experiences (organic thinking) are also spatial volitional (but unconscious) movements, insofar as they are the fallout, or condensation, of formative processes whose manifestation require our human physicality to play out in space.