Why do we see in two dimensional and not three of four dimensions?

Question

What would happen to our way of life if we viewed objects in three or four dimensional? Would this ability expand our minds or totally freak us out?

Answer 1

Let us expand a little on the concepts that have already been explained. And, by the way, you are not an idiot or dolt. You have either been misinformed or had a hard time trying to explain the theory you had in your head but translated incorrectly in your question. Lots of people wait to pounce on anyone who makes a spelling or grammatical error.

Anyways, back to the subject at hand.

Yes, it is correct that people "see" in 3 dimension. Some may even argue that we see in 4 dimensions as that we are always conscious and aware of the passage of time.

What is actually interesting is that some experiments are under way to physically witness particles on a sub-microscopic level fade in and out of our dimension into another dimension. This is to test a theory called "Superstring Theory" which makes the assumption that if matter is just types of "strings" vibrating and resonating at different harmonics and frequency, there would have to be 7 different dimensions. They are also testing to see if a massive collision will cause tiny black holes (they would only last for a fraction of time).

So, though we may not be able to "experience" anything in these newly discovered dimensions, and perhaps not see anything differently in terms of sight, our perception and certainly our awareness will change.

~jaz~

Answer 2

I mentioned this in response to another question. There are a couple of old books called Flatland and Sphereland I believe and these give you the perspective of people living on a two dimensional surface. If you really want to analyze these sorts of things that you bring up with your question, I say a good way to do it is by thinking and examining the two dimensional world because that is one we can fully understand. Take a 2D person, call him Circle. Now Circle when he looks at things what does he see? He sees a line, there may be things further away or closer but it is still a line (a one dimensional construct). When he comes upon a square house, he must move around it to know the shape just as we must move around a three dimensional object to really know it's shape. What Circle can not do is what we can do and that is look down upon his world and see a square as a square (actually see the two dimensional extent of his world). Likewise if there were four dimensional guys (forget the time is the fourth dimension stuff and imagine a fourth spatial dimension) then they could look down at us and see a cube as a cube, all sides at once just as we do with the square house that Circle sees, which is something we can not do or even imagine doing except by analogy with a two dimensional world. So I would say that the general rule about seeing is that it is really a dimension lower than the one you live in. And even if lifted from your dimension to a higher one, you would still not be able to experience the seeing at the level of the dimension you live in. Take Circle and lift him up. His sight is limited to a plane because he is a two dimensional person. He must be rotated so his plane of vision intersects the plane of his world and what he would see would be very confusing, a line sweeping this way and that across his world, through people, through houses (I am assuming some sort of illumination that is independent of dimensions and that 2D, 3D, etc people can see). If the same happened to us what would we see? We would see inside locked rooms, inside people. Our view would be the intersection of two three D spaces (which is something we can not understand except by analogy with that 2D world).
The reason Circle and ourselves would have limited vision is because, even if lifted along another dimension, we are still products of a the dimensional world we live in and so is our eyesight.

Seeing truly 3D would be a little strange. Think of that square house and Circle. He can only see the lines that make up the walls. We, on the other hand can see the lines and the insides all at the same time. So a 4D guy would be able to see our skin as well as our insides at the same time, the walls of our house and the insides at the same time. Very strange.

Answer 3

shadows made by 4 dimensional objects are not 3 dimensional, I know this because I am a 4 dimensional object and cast a 2 dimensional shadow. All objects are 4 dimensional, the only thing that would be a non-4 dimensional object would be something that did not progress through time. Also, the 2 shadows overlapping thing is like painting a wall, by putting 2 coats of paint on instead of 1, you do not create a second wall. Also a shadow is a lack of light, and a lack of something is never 3 dimensional.

Answer 4

We only see in two dimensions, everyone else is wrong. We perceive the world in 3d but it is an illusion. From moment to moment we see 2 dimensional snap shots that our mind organizes as a continual sequence of images. Depth perception and simple observation allow us to conclude the world is 3D. Imagining seeing more than 2 dimensions is impossible. It would probably totally freak us out. As a though exercise, imagine perceiving the world as 2D and only seeing in 1, what would that look like? It would be just a single point with a distance from you.

Answer 5

Here's a less hostile answer for you...

First, as has been pointed out, we DO see in 3d. We can perceive X, Y, and Z directions, or observe what we call "volume", right? Okay, so here's what some have said about this. We have, at birth, a rapid "use it or lose it" process going on in our brains. That is, things that our brains don't use--thus building synaptic connections for those abilities--result in the permanent loss of those synapses.

For example, if you were born into an absolutely soundless world, then you would become deaf. Even though you have all the hearing equipment, if you don't use it, your brain loses the ability to process the information. So, it's been suggested that somewhere back during the early stages of evolution, any ability to perceive higher orders of space simple vanished...if it ever was there to begin with. As of today, it's been totally bred out of us.

We don't interact with it, so we don't have the ability to perceive it.

This is all, 100%, totally speculation though. Don't take any of this as "scientific" thinking about 4d.

Answer 6

Binocular vision and depth perception and perspective all let us see in the third dimension. Movement detection software built into our vision and brain lets us see the time component. You have no trouble following a fly buzzing around the room, do you? That would give height width depth and time. Looks like all four dimensions are covered very well for the scale humans use to hunt.

Answer 7

We do see in three dimensions...actually, if you think about it, we experince four dimensions: the three visual ones (height, width, depth) and time. Without that fourth dimension we would not see at all because nothing is truly instantaneous. It takes time for our eyes and brains to recieve and interpret light.

Theoretically, there could be any number of dimensions to existence, but for the moment, we only know about those four.

Answer 8

We do see in three dimensional. TV shows are in 2 dimensions but the world we live in is in the 3rd dimension.

Answer 9

We do see in 4D, we have three dimensional vision plus we are aware of time passing so thats the fourth.

Answer 10

We do see in 3 dimensions you dolt! I can see an objects length, width, and depth. 3 dimensions, the fourth is time!