Views of the Tesseract


In his treatise on The Fourth Dimension (1904), British mathematician Charles Hinton demonstrated how three-dimensional representations do not adequately represent all of the elements of matter, only its three spatial coordinates, leaving change over time represented by supplemental charts, graphs, or diagrams, in order to contemplate the internal, invisible forces at work. Hinton’s work furthered that of Immanuel Kant who recognized that our assumptions of universal laws of nature are based on our perception of the world and, therefore, may be valid only from that particular vantage and not describe the universal. After realizing the subjectivity of perception of the world, Hinton believed that man was positioned to be able to perceive beyond his/her own limitations. At which point, Hinton developed several means to conceive of fourth dimensional figures, creating a language of space with an alphabetic or a color code to describe a tesseract.

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