"There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it. ...space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to these planes, each at right angle to the others. But some philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions particularly—why not another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even tried to construct a Four Dimensional geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of a Three-Dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could represent one of four—if they could master the perspective of the thing. See?"
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Mathematicians from the United StatesHarvard University alumniJohns Hopkins University facultyPeople from Nova Scotia
Original Language: English
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H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Simon_Newcomb
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Simon Newcomb
Simon Newcomb (March 12, 1835 – July 11, 1909) was a Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician, and Professor of Mathematics in the U.S. Navy and at Johns Hopkins. Though he had little conventional schooling, he made important contributions to timekeeping as well as writing on economics and statistics and authoring a science fiction novel.
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