Life needs ‘thickness’.
As suggested in the drawing above, if animals had only two dimensions they would have had to make do without any digestive systems.

Hence we live in a 3 dimensional environment.
But we, the only fully conscious beings on Earth, live ‘on a surface’.
We’ve learned to fly rather late in our evolution. Most of us behave as if able to fully process only two and a half dimensions. We make good use of height and length, the things we ‘face’, but depth is rather tricky for most of us.
OK, we’ve climbed up and down trees and mountains since only ‘god’ knows when but we’re basically runners. And runners run on a surface. Runners run along a mostly linear trajectory which happens mostly on a surface. This whole thing takes place in a three dimensional environment, true, but our ‘running’ nature has left some influences on the way we think.

The most obvious one being the discursive nature of our reasoning. We start from ‘premises’, go along a logical path and end up with conclusions. We very much like the things which fit into a narrative. And we hate going back to reconsider our ways.

Since Einstein has noticed that things were ‘relative’ – to the manner in which we measured them – we have started to add dimensions. To the previously 3 dimensional environment into which we used to live.
The first dimension which had been added was time.
Nowadays, many scientists believe that ‘the universe operates with 10 dimensions but 6 of them are very tiny‘.

I’m not going to contradict them. For the very simple reason that I don’t know – and don’t care – about the other 6. Dimensions. I’m sure that they are out there, somewhere, and that those who have discovered those dimensions knew what they were doing.

What I’m going to do is to propose a new manner of counting. ‘Dimensions’.
Redefine them, first, and only then (re)count.

What do you think about mass? Is is a dimension?
How about energy? ‘White’ (aka ‘visible’), ‘dark‘ … whatever…

Since the ‘jury is still out’…

I’m going to pause the narrative here to make a point.

‘The jury is still out’ means two things.
The obvious and the one which stops us from sleeping at night.
The fact that the jury – us – hasn’t (yet) been able to fulfill the task.

Back to our main thread.

How about we return to our good old 3 dimensional Universe?

Where space is what separates ‘things’, time is what separates ‘events’ and opportunity is what sets the stage for ‘things’ to evolve into ‘events’?

Easier said than done?
In the sense that it’s very easy to put it into words but there’s no mathematics available to describe in ‘absolute’ terms what I’ve just narrated?
They key word hasn’t been mentioned in the phrase above.
There’s no mathematics available yet…
The mathematics used by Einstein to demonstrate his theories wasn’t available to Newton…
Mathematics – a form of artificial language – is invented by those capable to do that as soon as the opportunity arises.
As soon as there’s a need for new ways to express new perceptions of reality.

And no, don’t expect me to come up with new mathematical expressions of anything.
I’m no artist. I have enough trouble expressing my using with mere words.

Since this post is about dimensions, not about my limitations, I’ll end up remembering the three (meta?) dimensions. In a more ‘natural’ order.

Opportunity.

Anything which makes things possible.
Mass – visible and/or dark, energy – visible and/or dark – and anything else which ‘works’ in this sense.
I’m going to make a second – and a lot shorter – ‘transgression’ here and remind you how ‘relative’ things are. How right Einstein was. We speak about visible matter being “normal” and about “dark” (invisible to us) energy/matter having to exist in order for us to be able to make sense of the Universe as we are able to perceive.

Space

Whatever it is that separates, and also harbours, ‘islands of concentrated opportunity’. Mainly ‘mass’ but who knows (yet) what else might be ‘separated/harboured’ by space. Energy – as we know it, is somewhat distributed ‘along’ space rather than ‘separated’ by space.

Time

Whatever it is that separates, and also sequences, events. Happenings.
‘Notable’ ‘intersections’ between matter and energy.
Here, again, we have a difference between matter and energy. While matter seems to ‘survive’ better ‘in time’, energy seems to be more ‘vulnerable’ to the passage of time. Entropy….