Hiding in the Mirror Read Free Page B

art. Science
is not practiced in a vacuum, and, as I have argued, the very fact
that the same ideas crop up, often centuries apart, may be telling
us something, if not about the natural world, then at least about
the human mind.
    But what I ultimately find so striking about
this story is a facet of science that mesmerizes me each time I
visit a physics laboratory. While nothing may seem more esoteric
than the notion of hidden extra dimensions, the scientific basis of
all such theoretical speculations follows a sometimes circuitous
path that however remains rooted in experiment. This remains true
even if these experiments sometimes appear on the surface to be as
far removed from these notions as baseball is from brain surgery.
Through this roundabout process, scientific progress has
nevertheless been unmistakable. We fly in airplanes and launch
rockets that explore the outer planets. We develop new medicines
that extend our lives. We communicate electronically across the
globe in an instant, sending messages that once would have taken
weeks or months to arrive. Science is an arena of human affairs
where we have every right to demand proof
that new ideas work.
    While Plato’s beliefs about mathematics may
seem distinctly modern, Greek philosophy as a whole was largely
impotent in technologically empowering that civilization precisely
because empiricism was missing from the equation. Natural
philosophy had not yet evolved into science. When it thus comes to
the possibility that the three dimensions of space we experience
are not all there is, I admit to being an agnostic. There are
fascinating scientific and mathematical reasons to at least consider
the possibility that our three-dimensional space is but the tip of
a vast cosmic iceberg. At the same time, there is as of yet not a
single compelling reason to believe that this is actually so.
    By exploring the artistic, literary, and
scientific bases of our current worldview, and taking the discussion
up to the current threshold of our own understanding and our own
ignorance, we will encounter some of the most fascinating
developments of the human mind and some of the most remarkable
discoveries about our own universe. Ultimately, I hope to provide
you with a better perspective to help you decide on your own what
seems plausible, and why. At this point, I believe it is anyone’s
guess.
    As we embark on our tour, it may be worth
quoting the cautionary advice of Antoine Lavoisier, one of the
great scientists of the eighteenth century. Lavoisier was the
father of much of modern chemistry but was executed during the
French Revolution, which was itself based on an illfounded notion
of a “scientific” basis for human affairs. He is best known for his
discovery of the profoundly important role of an invisible gas,
oxygen, in the chemistry of our world. Regarding the emerging
exotic science he helped found, Lavoisier warned: “It is with
things that one can neither see nor feel that it is important to
guard against flights of imagination.”

C H A P T E R 2
FROM FROGS’ LEGS TO FIELDS
    Why sir, there is every
possibility that you will soon be able to tax it!
    —Michael Faraday to Gladstone when asked about
the usefulness of electricity
    T he scientific
realization that space and time might not be quite what they seem
emerged from the unlikeliest of places: the nineteenthcentury
laboratory of a former bookbinder’s apprentice turned chemist, then
physicist, tucked away in the heart of London, over fifty years
before Edward Abbott penned his mathematical romance of many
dimensions.
    Michael Faraday was a common man with an
uncommon passion. In his lifetime he refused both a knighthood and
the presidency of the Royal Society, preferring to remain, in his
words, “just plain Michael Faraday.”
    Perhaps his humble background forced him to
develop an uncommon intuition about nature or at least an uncommon
ability to develop pictorial explanations of natural phenomena