CHAPTER 11
Science and the problem of the fourth dimension. Paper read by Professor N. A.
Oumoff at the Mendeleev Convention in 1911, The Characteristic Features and
Problems of Contemporary Natural-scientific Thought'. New physics. Electro
magnetic theory. Principles of relativity. The works of Einstein and Minkowsky.
Simultaneous existence of the past and the future. The eternal Now. Van Manen's
book on occult experiences. Diagram of a four-dimensional figure.
Speaking generally about the problems of time, space and
higher dimensions,
expounded in the preceding chapters, it is impossible to avoid dwelling once more on
the attitude of science to those problems. To many people the attitude of 'exact
knowledge' to those questions seems a riddle; and yet they are undoubtedly the most
important of all the questions which at present engage the attention of human thought.
If it is important, then why does science not speak about it? And why, on the
contrary, does science go on repeating opposite affirmations,
pretending not to know, or
not to notice, a whole series of theories and hypotheses which have been advanced?
Science should be the
investigation of the unknown.
Why then does it not strive to
investigate this
unknown
which has been for so long brought to its notice and which
very soon will even cease to be unknown?
To this one can only answer that, unfortunately, only a very small part of official
academic science undertakes what it should, i.e. to investigate the new and the
unknown. The greater part of it is merely
instruction
in what has
long become
commonplace for independent thought or, still worse, what has long become obsolete
and discarded as useless.
Therefore, it is especially gratifying to note that, at times, even in science one may
detect a tendency towards a quest for new horizons of thought; in other words, that
academic routine and an obligatory reiteration of an endless
number of commonplaces
have not always and in all cases succeeded in killing love of knowledge and the
capacity of independent thinking.
Although very timidly and tentatively, in some of its boldest
representatives,
SCIENCE
, in the last decades has, after all, touched upon
problems of
higher dimensions, and in such cases arrived at results almost
identical with those expounded in the preceding chapters.
In December 1911 the Second Mendeleev Convention was opened by a
paper read by Professor N. A. Oumoff,
devoted to problems of time and
higher dimensions,
under the title: The Characteristic Features and Problems
of Contemporary Natural-scientific Thought'.
Professor N. A. Oumoff's paper, in spite of a certain incomplete-ness, is an
event of great magnitude in the realm of science and will doubtless be, in
time, recorded in the history of the development of exact knowledge as an
unusually bold and outstanding
attempt to proclaim, in the citadel of
positivism which the Mendeleev Convention should have been, new ideas,
which, in their essence, refute positivism in its entirety.
However, inertia and routine were bound to do their work. Professor N. A.
Oumoff's paper was heard among a number of other papers, was duly
published in the proceedings of the Convention and
remained there, utterly
failing to produce the effect of a bombshell which it should have done had
the listeners been more able, and above all more willing, to appreciate its real
meaning and significance.
Of course, the weakening of the significance of Professor Oumoff's paper
was to a great extent due to certain reservations and limitations made by
himself, to the title of the paper, which failed to express its substance, and to
its
general tendency, striving to demonstrate that
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