The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science Science and Method Part 12

It may also be said that a movement which has once been produced may be repeated a second and a third time, and so on, without its properties varying.

In the first chapter, where we discussed the nature of mathematical reasoning, we saw the importance which must be attributed to the possibility of repeating indefinitely the same operation.

It is from this repet.i.tion that mathematical reasoning gets its power; it is, therefore, thanks to the law of h.o.m.ogeneity, that it has a hold on the geometric facts.

For completeness, to the law of h.o.m.ogeneity should be added a mult.i.tude of other a.n.a.logous laws, into the details of which I do not wish to enter, but which mathematicians sum up in a word by saying that displacements form 'a group.'

THE NON-EUCLIDEAN WORLD.--If geometric s.p.a.ce were a frame imposed on _each_ of our representations, considered individually, it would be impossible to represent to ourselves an image stripped of this frame, and we could change nothing of our geometry.

But this is not the case; geometry is only the resume of the laws according to which these images succeed each other. Nothing then prevents us from imagining a series of representations, similar in all points to our ordinary representations, but succeeding one another according to laws different from those to which we are accustomed.

We can conceive then that beings who received their education in an environment where these laws were thus upset might have a geometry very different from ours.

Suppose, for example, a world enclosed in a great sphere and subject to the following laws:

The temperature is not uniform; it is greatest at the center, and diminishes in proportion to the distance from the center, to sink to absolute zero when the sphere is reached in which this world is enclosed.

To specify still more precisely the law in accordance with which this temperature varies: Let _R_ be the radius of the limiting sphere; let _r_ be the distance of the point considered from the center of this sphere. The absolute temperature shall be proportional to _R_^{2} - _r_^{2}.

I shall further suppose that, in this world, all bodies have the same coefficient of dilatation, so that the length of any rule is proportional to its absolute temperature.

Finally, I shall suppose that a body transported from one point to another of different temperature is put immediately into thermal equilibrium with its new environment.

Nothing in these hypotheses is contradictory or unimaginable.

A movable object will then become smaller and smaller in proportion as it approaches the limit-sphere.

Note first that, though this world is limited from the point of view of our ordinary geometry, it will appear infinite to its inhabitants.

In fact, when these try to approach the limit-sphere, they cool off and become smaller and smaller. Therefore the steps they take are also smaller and smaller, so that they can never reach the limiting sphere.

If, for us, geometry is only the study of the laws according to which rigid solids move, for these imaginary beings it will be the study of the laws of motion of solids _distorted by the differences of temperature_ just spoken of.

No doubt, in our world, natural solids likewise undergo variations of form and volume due to warming or cooling. But we neglect these variations in laying the foundations of geometry, because, besides their being very slight, they are irregular and consequently seem to us accidental.

In our hypothetical world, this would no longer be the case, and these variations would follow regular and very simple laws.

Moreover, the various solid pieces of which the bodies of its inhabitants would be composed would undergo the same variations of form and volume.

I will make still another hypothesis; I will suppose light traverses media diversely refractive and such that the index of refraction is inversely proportional to _R_^{2} - _r_^{2}. It is easy to see that, under these conditions, the rays of light would not be rectilinear, but circular.

To justify what precedes, it remains for me to show that certain changes in the position of external objects can be _corrected_ by correlative movements of the sentient beings inhabiting this imaginary world, and that in such a way as to restore the primitive aggregate of impressions experienced by these sentient beings.

Suppose in fact that an object is displaced, undergoing deformation, not as a rigid solid, but as a solid subjected to unequal dilatations in exact conformity to the law of temperature above supposed. Permit me for brevity to call such a movement a _non-Euclidean displacement_.

If a sentient being happens to be in the neighborhood, his impressions will be modified by the displacement of the object, but he can reestablish them by moving in a suitable manner. It suffices if finally the aggregate of the object and the sentient being, considered as forming a single body, has undergone one of those particular displacements I have just called non-Euclidean. This is possible if it be supposed that the limbs of these beings dilate according to the same law as the other bodies of the world they inhabit.

Although from the point of view of our ordinary geometry there is a deformation of the bodies in this displacement and their various parts are no longer in the same relative position, nevertheless we shall see that the impressions of the sentient being have once more become the same.

In fact, though the mutual distances of the various parts may have varied, yet the parts originally in contact are again in contact.

Therefore the tactile impressions have not changed.

On the other hand, taking into account the hypothesis made above in regard to the refraction and the curvature of the rays of light, the visual impressions will also have remained the same.

These imaginary beings will therefore like ourselves be led to cla.s.sify the phenomena they witness and to distinguish among them the 'changes of position' susceptible of correction by a correlative voluntary movement.

If they construct a geometry, it will not be, as ours is, the study of the movements of our rigid solids; it will be the study of the changes of position which they will thus have distinguished and which are none other than the 'non-Euclidean displacements'; _it will be non-Euclidean geometry_.

Thus beings like ourselves, educated in such a world, would not have the same geometry as ours.

THE WORLD OF FOUR DIMENSIONS.--We can represent to ourselves a four-dimensional world just as well as a non-Euclidean.

The sense of sight, even with a single eye, together with the muscular sensations relative to the movements of the eyeball, would suffice to teach us s.p.a.ce of three dimensions.

The images of external objects are painted on the retina, which is a two-dimensional canvas; they are _perspectives_.

But, as eye and objects are movable, we see in succession various perspectives of the same body, taken from different points of view.

At the same time, we find that the transition from one perspective to another is often accompanied by muscular sensations.

If the transition from the perspective _A_ to the perspective _B_, and that from the perspective _A'_ to the perspective _B'_ are accompanied by the same muscular sensations, we liken them one to the other as operations of the same nature.

Studying then the laws according to which these operations combine, we recognize that they form a group, which has the same structure as that of the movements of rigid solids.

Now, we have seen that it is from the properties of this group we have derived the notion of geometric s.p.a.ce and that of three dimensions.

We understand thus how the idea of a s.p.a.ce of three dimensions could take birth from the pageant of these perspectives, though each of them is of only two dimensions, since _they follow one another according to certain laws_.

Well, just as the perspective of a three-dimensional figure can be made on a plane, we can make that of a four-dimensional figure on a picture of three (or of two) dimensions. To a geometer this is only child's play.

We can even take of the same figure several perspectives from several different points of view.

We can easily represent to ourselves these perspectives, since they are of only three dimensions.

Imagine that the various perspectives of the same object succeed one another, and that the transition from one to the other is accompanied by muscular sensations.

We shall of course consider two of these transitions as two operations of the same nature when they are a.s.sociated with the same muscular sensations.

Nothing then prevents us from imagining that these operations combine according to any law we choose, for example, so as to form a group with the same structure as that of the movements of a rigid solid of four dimensions.

Here there is nothing unpicturable, and yet these sensations are precisely those which would be felt by a being possessed of a two-dimensional retina who could move in s.p.a.ce of four dimensions. In this sense we may say the fourth dimension is imaginable.

CONCLUSIONS.--We see that experience plays an indispensable role in the genesis of geometry; but it would be an error thence to conclude that geometry is, even in part, an experimental science.

If it were experimental, it would be only approximative and provisional.

And what rough approximation!

Geometry would be only the study of the movements of solids; but in reality it is not occupied with natural solids, it has for object certain ideal solids, absolutely rigid, which are only a simplified and very remote image of natural solids.