[ExI] Proofs of the Tri-Dimensionality of Space

[Anders Sandberg]

On 21/08/2013 05:31, Dan Ust wrote:
> http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/ccallender/index_files/An%20Answer%20in%20Search%20of%20a%20Question4.doc
>
> Comments? I'm interested in the literature in arguments for physical 
> space having n dimensions. Any good reads you can recommend in this area?
>

I got my earliest introduction in Barrow and Tipler's "The Anthropic 
Cosmological Principle". Max Tegmark has a few nice papers too. 
Lämmerzahl and Macias try to prove it using the Dirac equation instead: 
http://www.zarm.uni-bremen.de/uploads/tx_sibibtex/1993LaemmerzahlMacias_Dimen_JMP.pdf
Caruso instead argues that the formation of life puts in the constraint, 
and points out that it looks unavoidable to get some form of the 
anthropic principle to do the work in this kind of argument: 
http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.0684v1

Some other books are "Relativity and the Dimensionality of the World" 
ed. Vesselin Petkov, Springer 2007, apparently a sequel to the more 
philosophical "The Ontology of Spacetime".

But as the initial paper shows, there are deeper problems in how one can 
"prove" it than most papers discuss. I know philosophers of physics 
wrestle with this quite a lot.



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University

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