The Fourth Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality (1984) is a popular mathematics book by Rudy Rucker, a Silicon Valley professor of mathematics and computer science. It provides a popular presentation of set theory and four dimensional geometry as well as some mystical implications. A foreword is provided by Martin Gardner and the 200+ illustrations are by David Povilaitis.
The Fourth Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality was reprinted in 1985 as the paperback The Fourth Dimension: A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes. It was again reprinted in paperback in 2014 by Dover Publications with its original subtitle.
Like other Rucker books, The Fourth Dimension is dedicated to Edwin Abbott Abbott, author of the novella Flatland.
Synopsis
The Fourth Dimension teaches readers about the concept of a fourth spatial dimension. Several analogies are made to Flatland; in particular, Rucker compares how a square in Flatland would react to a cube in Spaceland to how a cube in Spaceland would react to a hypercube from the fourth dimension.
The book also includes multiple puzzles.
Reception
Kirkus Reviews called it "animated, often amusing", and a "rare treat", but noted that the book eventually leaves mathematical topics behind to focus instead on "mysticism of the all-is-one-one-is-all thinking of an Ouspensky."[1] The Quarterly Review of Biology declared it to be "nice", and "at times (...) enchanting", comparing it to The Tao of Physics.[2]
See also
Hiding in the Mirror, a similar book by Lawrence M. Krauss.
References
THE FOURTH DIMENSION: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality, reviewed at Kirkus Reviews; published October 8, 1984; retrieved June 27, 2018
[Scott Ferson, "The Fourth Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality. Rudy Rucker ," The Quarterly Review of Biology 61, no. 1 (Mar., 1986): 166.; https://doi.org/10.1086/414894
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Works of Rudy Rucker
Novels
The Ware Tetralogy
Software (1982) Wetware (1988) Freeware (1997) Realware (2000)
Transreal novels
White Light (1980) Spacetime Donuts (1981) The Sex Sphere (1983) The Secret of Life (1985) The Hacker and the Ants (1994) (Revised 'Version 2.0' 2003) Saucer Wisdom (1999) novel marketed as non-fiction The Big Aha (2013)
Other Novels
Master of Space and Time (1984) The Hollow Earth (1990) Spaceland (2002) As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel (2002) Frek and the Elixir (2004) Mathematicians in Love (2006) Postsingular (2007) Hylozoic (2009) Jim and the Flims (2011) Turing and Burroughs (2012) Return to the Hollow Earth (2018) Million Mile Road Trip (2019)
Short fiction collections
The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka (1983) Transreal!, also includes some non-fiction essays (1991) Gnarl! (2000), complete short stories Mad Professor (2006) Complete Stories (2012) Transreal Cyberpunk, with Bruce Sterling (2016)
Non-fiction
As author
Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension (1977) Infinity and the Mind (1982) The Fourth Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality (1984) Mind Tools (1987) All the Visions (1991), Seek! (1999) Software Engineering and Computer Games (2002) The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me about Ultimate Reality, the Meaning of Life, and how to be Happy (2005) Nested Scrolls (2011) Collected Essays (2012) Journals 1990-2014 (2015)
As editor
Speculations on the Fourth Dimension: Selected Writings of Charles H. Hinton (1980) Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical Wonder (1987) Semiotext(e) SF (1989)
Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics
Graduate Studies in Mathematics
Hellenica World - Scientific Library
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