平行宇宙/影子、維度與真理
March-I/一年級/謝淳玉老師組
曾經有一個方形來到了線王國,線王國的人民覺得方形太神奇了,方形可以一下出現,一下消失。線國人民於是把方形帶到國王面前,要國王好好瞧一瞧。方形努力解釋那是因為他們身處一維世界,只能看到一條線,看不到自己是一個面的事實,他並且試圖讓國王理解,除了線的世界,還有另外一個維度更大的世界,他講二維世界的種種給國王聽。講著講著,方形突然意識到或許這個世界還有比自己身處的二維更高的維度,而自己,也像國王一樣,難以體會高維世界的模樣。
Once a square come to the kingdom of line, people in the line kingdom find square is purely magical, he can be in this place and vanish all of a sudden. People of the line kingdom take sqaure to their king. They have to have their king to see this! The square explains that it's because they are in the world of one dimension so they can only see a line and cannot see the fact that himself is a sqaure. He further explains to the king that there's a higher dimension world. He talks all about the world of 2 dimensions to the king. Then, he suddenly realizes maybe there's also another dimension that is higher than his own dimension, and himself, just like the king, has difficulty understanding it. (content from"flatland"1884 )
小飛俠彼得潘活在永遠不會變老的奇幻世界裡,作者對彼得與影子之間著墨了一番,不像一般世界裡的人,彼得的影子是有自主性的。我們台語說:『真的!』,音為『無影』,直翻為『有影』,言下之意是真實的東西才有影子。柏拉圖曾經以洞穴的預言描述身處洞穴的人們只能藉由洞外投射進來的光產生的影子,來瞭解洞外的世界,然而有少數人不安於現狀,勇於尋找洞外真實的光源,我們稱這種人為智者。洞穴裡的人看到的世界是三維的投影,如果四維世界存在,那麼我們是不是也只是自己四維世界的投影呢?我們不禁懷疑,到底哪一個世界才是真實的?
Peter Pan lives in the world where no body grows old. J. M. Barrie, the author of the novel, uses some paragraphs to describe details about Peter and his shadow. Unlike the real world, Peter's shadow has his own personality and is independent from Peter. Another interesting thing about shadow is in the dialect of South Eastern China, Taiwanese, when people say "Is it true?" They usually say "Is it with shadow?", meaning that only the truthful thing has shadow. Plato Once describes "the allergy of the cave" explaining that people in the cave can only see the shadows casting from the outside world. Few of them can't satisfied the status quo and were brave enough to seek for the real source of light. We call them the wise. If people living in the cave see the world that is one degree minus from our real 3 dimention world, and if the 4th dimention does exist, aren't we only see the shadows of 4 dimention world? Do we actually see the world or only the shadow of it? And we can't help but wonder which world is real?
Delusion Dwellers by Laurie Lipton
追求真理是人類共同的本性,追逐到後來卻往往比初始時更加迷惑了。我們開始懷疑,或許真理不只有一個,真理可以是很多個,就像作品1超級立方體的影子可有多種清晰可辨認的幾何形狀一般,我們無法判定哪一個才是實物真正的影子,夢寐以求的真理永遠存在於更高的維度中。作品2平行宇宙則是超級立方體的延伸,兩個立方體分別代表平行的世界,真理的影子存在於各自的世界中,而兩個平行的世界又都存在於自己價值觀的偽座標中。
The request for the truth is the nature of human being. In the end, however, the journey has make a even more puzzled than we first started. We start to question: what if there are truths? There can be more than one truth! They are called truth anyhow.
I've made a hypercube. We can see different geometric shadows of the hypercube as it rotates, but we can't be quite sure which one is its? They are all its shadows. So perhaps the truth lies in a higher dimension and we only see shadows of it.
物理學中的量子力學或許為我們投射了洞外那一束光線。測不準原理闡述了當人們欲知電子的位置時,就不能確切知道它的速度;相對的,完全知道電子速度的時候,就只能知道其大概的位置,總是無法兩全其美。因為,就在人們測量位置與速度的同時,也改變了電子最初的軌道,就像我們欲試圖理解別的文化時,總是不能拋棄舊有價值觀與成見,就算一旦完全拋棄了原本的價值觀,對於新的價值觀與文化也就無從評量起了。
In quantum physics,"uncertainty principle" casts a perculiar shadow for us. When we locate electron's position , we can't quite specified its speed. We can only know the range of it, but not the exact speed. Relatively, if we know exact speed of the electron, we cannot precisely locate its position but only the range of it. The fact is that our intent to mesure its position and speed has altered the original track. Somehow it is similar to our familiar world. As we try to understand the other culture, the old value within us has already set for us on how we see it and we cannot be objective. Here comes the question of objective and subjective. One can be miserablely fall into the deep well of not being able to be entirely objective. It's a tragedy. But here's an positive thinking! If there's no subjective, nothing can't be discussed. The minute we cast a question, we are not objective. Subjective is not entilrely sinful afterall.