Four-dimensionalism

Author: Theodore Sider
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199263523
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
Four-Dimensionalism defends the thesis that the material world is composed of temporal as well as spatial parts. This defense includes a novel account of persistence over time, new arguments in favour of the four-dimensional ontology, and responses to the challenges four-dimensionalism faces. Theodore Sider pays particular attention to the philosophy of time, including a strong series of arguments against presentism, the thesis that only the present is real. Arguments offered in favour offour-dimensionalism include novel arguments based on time travel, the debate beween spacetime substantivalists and relationalists, and vagueness. Also included is a comprehensive discussion of the paradoxes of coinciding material objects, and a novel resolution of those paradoxes based on temporal counterpart theory. In conclusion Sider replies to prominent objections to four-dimensionalism, including discussion of the problem of the rotating homogenous disk. Four Dimensionalism is an originaland highly readable study of the metaphysics of time and identity.

Four-Dimensionalism

Author: Theodore Sider
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191529583
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
Four-Dimensionalism defends the thesis that the material world is composed of temporal as well as spatial parts. This defense includes a novel account of persistence over time, new arguments in favour of the four-dimensional ontology, and responses to the challenges four-dimensionalism faces. Theodore Sider pays particular attention to the philosophy of time, including a strong series of arguments against presentism, the thesis that only the present is real. Arguments offered in favour of four-dimensionalism include novel arguments based on time travel, the debate beween spacetime substantivalists and relationalists, and vagueness. Also included is a comprehensive discussion of the paradoxes of coinciding material objects, and a novel resolution of those paradoxes based on temporal counterpart theory. In conclusion Sider replies to prominent objections to four-dimensionalism, including discussion of the problem of the rotating homogenous disk. Four Dimensionalism is an original and highly readable study of the metaphysics of time and identity.

The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World

Author: Laurence Scott
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393353087
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Book Description
You are a four-dimensional human. Each of us exists in three-dimensional, physical space. But, as a constellation of everyday digital phenomena rewires our lives, we are increasingly coaxed from the containment of our predigital selves into a wonderful and eerie fourth dimension, a world of ceaseless communication, instant information, and global connection. Our portals to this new world have been wedged open, and the silhouette of a figure is slowly taking shape. But what does it feel like to be four-dimensional? How do digital technologies influence the rhythms of our thoughts, the style and tilt of our consciousness? What new sensitivities and sensibilities are emerging with our exposure to the delights, sorrows, and anxieties of a networked world? And how do we live in public with these recoded private lives? Laurence Scott—hailed as a "New Generation Thinker" by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the BBC—shows how this four-dimensional life is dramatically changing us by redefining our social lives and extending the limits of our presence in the world. Blending tech-philosophy with insights on everything from Seinfeld to the fall of Gaddafi, Scott stands with a rising generation of social critics hoping to understand our new reality. His virtuosic debut is a revelatory and original exploration of life in the digital age.

Four-dimensional Education

Author: Charles Fadel
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781518642562
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The foundational reason for why we find it so difficult to rebuild school curricula around the needs of the modern world is that we lack an organizing framework that can help prioritise educational competencies, and systematically structure the conversation around what individuals should learn at various stages of their development. Four-dimensional education provides a clear and actionable first-of-its-kind organizing framework of competencies needed for this century. Its main innovation lies in not presenting yet another one-size-fits-all list of what individuals should learn, but in crisply defining the spaces in which educators, curriculum planners, policymakers and learners can establish what should be learned, in their context and for their future.

The Fourth Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality

Author: Rudy Rucker
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486779785
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Book Description
One of the most talented contemporary authors of cutting-edge math and science books conducts a fascinating tour of a higher reality, the Fourth Dimension. Includes problems, puzzles, and 200 drawings. "Informative and mind-dazzling." — Martin Gardner.

Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension

Author: Matt Parker
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374710376
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Book Description
A book from the stand-up mathematician that makes math fun again! Math is boring, says the mathematician and comedian Matt Parker. Part of the problem may be the way the subject is taught, but it's also true that we all, to a greater or lesser extent, find math difficult and counterintuitive. This counterintuitiveness is actually part of the point, argues Parker: the extraordinary thing about math is that it allows us to access logic and ideas beyond what our brains can instinctively do—through its logical tools we are able to reach beyond our innate abilities and grasp more and more abstract concepts. In the absorbing and exhilarating Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, Parker sets out to convince his readers to revisit the very math that put them off the subject as fourteen-year-olds. Starting with the foundations of math familiar from school (numbers, geometry, and algebra), he reveals how it is possible to climb all the way up to the topology and to four-dimensional shapes, and from there to infinity—and slightly beyond. Both playful and sophisticated, Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension is filled with captivating games and puzzles, a buffet of optional hands-on activities that entices us to take pleasure in math that is normally only available to those studying at a university level. Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension invites us to re-learn much of what we missed in school and, this time, to be utterly enthralled by it.

Non-Perturbative Field Theory

Author: Yitzhak Frishman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139486489
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 455

Book Description
Providing a new perspective on quantum field theory, this book is useful for graduate students and researchers within and outside the field. It describes non-perturbative methods, and explores two-dimensional and four-dimensional gauge dynamics using those methods. Applications are thoroughly described.

The Four-Dimensional Nightmare

Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description

Four Dimensional Vistas

Author: Claude Bragdon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Book Description

Carving Nature at Its Joints

Author: Joseph Keim Campbell
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262297906
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
Reflections on the metaphysics and epistemology of classification from a distinguished group of philosophers. Contemporary discussions of the success of science often invoke an ancient metaphor from Plato's Phaedrus: successful theories should "carve nature at its joints." But is nature really "jointed"? Are there natural kinds of things around which our theories cut? The essays in this volume offer reflections by a distinguished group of philosophers on a series of intertwined issues in the metaphysics and epistemology of classification. The contributors consider such topics as the relevance of natural kinds in inductive inference; the role of natural kinds in natural laws; the nature of fundamental properties; the naturalness of boundaries; the metaphysics and epistemology of biological kinds; and the relevance of biological kinds to certain questions in ethics. Carving Nature at Its Joints offers both breadth and thematic unity, providing a sampling of state-of-the-art work in contemporary analytic philosophy that will be of interest to a wide audience of scholars and students concerned with classification.