How to represent 4-dimensional space? thought experiment

Is it possible to imagine what a 4-dimensional space is, while remaining an inhabitant of a three-dimensional world? Just a glimpse of what the fourth dimension looks like? Let’s try a thought experiment.

First you need to understand what spatial dimensions are. I explain, not being a physicist, as a mere mortal.

Let’s start with a dot. A point has no length, no width, no height, or any other dimensions. In fact, it is an “object” devoid of any meaning. Absolute nothing. Zero dimension.

A point begins to “materialize”, acquire signs of at least something “real” when one of its dimensions appears – length. Then it becomes a line. But a line is also a very “strange” object, because it seems to have a length, but from the point of view of width, it is also emptiness and nothing. Something like a stretched void.

In turn, the line begins to acquire signs of something whole only when it is complemented by width and becomes a plane. But the plane from the position of height is just a donut hole.

Accordingly, the plane begins to acquire a sign of something even more integral only when another parameter appears in it – height. So there is an object with three dimensions – length, width and height.

Further, it is difficult for us, as inhabitants of the three-dimensional world, to construct something. But we can reason by analogy.

And it turns out that our world, if an inhabitant of the four-dimensional Universe looked at it, according to one of its parameters, is also a dummy and a donut hole.

He acquires integrity only when a new dimension begins to “materialize” in him. The manifestation of this new dimension is time, which flows, giving meaning to the three-dimensional world.

Therefore, when we see our world and the processes taking place in it in dynamics (the course of time, evolution, the expansion of the Universe, the discussion of this article, and so on), we, in fact, look at the four-dimensional world, but as if from the inside.

How it looks from the outside, we, unfortunately, are not given.