This is not just another book that tells you it is impossible to imagine the 4th dimension. Drawing on Nietzsche’s lament, “Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?” This book is an investigation into the significance of the recognition of the horizon for the phenomenological explication of the 4th dimension conforming higher mathematics and commented by artworks from 23 millennia.

“…placed on the ground of art—for the problem of science cannot be understood on the ground of science” Friedrich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy, or: Hellenism and Pessimism. Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1878 [1872, 1874], p.2, lines 4–14.

Due to differing dimension theories, ambiguity persists even more than 400 years after Descartes began to consider higher dimensions in the modern era, which is why hardly any contribution has ever been made to the phenomenological understanding of the fourth dimension. So it is necessary not only to revise the development of higher mathematics, but also to seek insights from the field of arts.

In art, concerns from science are sometimes understood and expressed emotionally for which there are still no concepts in the humanities. Consequently, I strive for a synthesis of intuitively grasped knowledge conveyed through art with scientific and mathematical theories.

The lack of a phenomenological clarification for a general agreement on dimensions (d > 3) affects not only the collective understanding of scientific theories but also the individual self-understanding of “being in the world,” and thus a philosophical problem that concerns us all. Peter Sloterdijk diagnosed „ontological dizziness“ and „Seinsvergessenheit“ („forgetfulness of Being,“)  while Paul Virilio declared the loss of the 4th dimension in 1991, and Julian Barbour proposed the end of time while Carlo Rovelli presents a blurred quantum space-time as „Order of Time“— the confusion is complete and a revision of time and the 4th dimension appears to be inevitable.

The phenomenological clarification is supported by arguments from W.G.T. Fechner, Edmund Husserl, Vilém Flusser, and Ernst Cassirer’s symbolic forms.

To underpin the epistemological value of art, I turn to Schelling’s Art as an Organon of Philosophy and Nietzsche, from whom I borrowed the book’s title. His question, “Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?” prompted me to reflect on the mathematical developments of his time and on the significance of the horizon for grasping the fourth dimension. Thus, the history of the horizon’s grasp and its shifting meaning is recounted here through images. It begins in the Stone Age, inspired by Nietzsche’s “Great Noon” as the “higher man” emerged, and ends in posthumanism.

RCZQ’s book entitled Who Wiped Away the Entire Horizon? — The Long History of the 4th Dimension Briefly Told in Many Pictures is being published by Taylor & Francis, New York, for release later in the year.

RCZQ is an independent researcher, affiliated with The Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society (GSIS).

You can support her work with a tax deductible donation using the code ‘4D’.
Donors will be acknowledged by name in the book.