Zen Gardner and I have noticed some weird synchronicities between us. Now here’s another one. On the day that he posted an essay about, in part, infinite parallel worlds, I was thinking similar thoughts, and using a geometrical metaphor to try to “explain” (describe) the possibility/actuality of infinite parallel worlds. It’s this:
Think of a point. A single point has no dimension. Look into the infinitesimality (is that a word?) of any point and space yawns open. The first actual dimension is the line, which comes when we connect two points. (And any line, of whatever length, is an infinite series of points!) Second dimension is the plane as in Flatland, and other fictional treatments of this world. For example, a square. Third dimension, continuing the metaphor, would be the cube.
Check out this quote, from wikianswers.com:
“A point is, by definition, zero in magnitude in all directions (zero volume). Hence, no dimension. A line is a collection of points; it has one dimension. A plane is a collection of lines; it has two dimensions. A cube is a collection of planes; it has 3 dimensions.”
You can keep going into higher and higher dimensions geometrically, if your imagination is flexible enough.
Mine isn’t. Not yet!
But what I can do is go back to ponder the dimensionless “reality” of a point. And think about an infinity of lines that can connect this point to an infinity of other points. And an infinity of planes that can come from those lines, all intersecting at/in that first point — an infinity of solids somehow growing from those planes, and so on.
All from a single point.
Each of them its own (parallel) world.
So if I, as a single “point,” am living in this world, am I also living in all other parallel worlds? If so, there’s no sense getting too attached, eh?
And when I do start to imagine this kind of infinity upon, with, and beyond infinities, all sorts of epistemological conundrums just vanish. It’s all equally real and not. The only difference between versions of one thing, or situation, or scene, or process, or person — is the power of projection. What we think of as “true” is just a version that had more chutzpah, staying power, or the power to seem to overwhelm other versions (for a while). But “false”? What place does the notion of “false” have where all and nothing is real?
Here’s Zen’s piece that touches into the same reality/unreality.
3 thoughts on “Synchronicity, the Geometry of Infinite Parallel Worlds, and Epistemology”
Either one gets the point or the whole thing is pointless. You seems to leave out once crucial variable. This is the concept and experience of meaningfulness. It is the personal meaning attributed to any data (internal and or external) that differentiates one set of data from another. No?
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Yep. You’re right. And love your line: “Either one gets the point or the whole thing is pointless.” Exactly!