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Higher dimensionality of psychosocial system reality


Oppositional Logic as Comprehensible Key to Sustainable Democracy (Part #6)


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There is an almost universal assumption that the challenges of global governance can be handled through a 3D framework, readily articulated in 2D tabular form -- but with projections over time honouring a fourth dimension. As noted by Sanjeev Seahra with respect to Why Bother with Extra Dimensions?:

Yet despite the preponderance of common sense to the contrary, many people have been interested in the idea that the world is a fundamentally higher-dimensional arena. Over the years such a notion has acquired an eclectic legion of followers; including everyone from serious scientists to science-fiction writers, psychics to spiritualists, and authors to artists. (Physics in Higher-Dimensional Manifolds, 2003)

Special visualization effects of every kind exploit this 4D framework -- although not in the formal articulations of governance. Given the demonstrable inadequacies and shortcomings. the struggle to encompass globality in 4D could be seen as a total failure to take advantage of the insights of mathematics and physics -- and 4D polyhedra, otherwise known as polychora (Four-dimensional requisite for a time-bound global civilization? 2015; Comprehending the shapes of time through four-dimensional uniform polychora, 2015). In terms of polyhedral representation, the relevance of the tesseract to oppositional logic was noted in an animation in the main paper.

A major difficulty of dimensionality greater than 4 is its challenge to comprehension and the elusive (if not paradoxical) nature of forms which may only achieve coherence -- geometrical, topological or otherwise -- in higher dimensions. This continues to be a theme of mathematical popularizers (Edwin Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, 1884; Ian Stewart, Flatterland, 2001; Dionys Burger, Sphereland: a fantasy about curved spaces and an expanding universe, 1965). The relevance to the coherence and viability of governance seemingly remains to be explored.


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