Question of Life: How many

dimensions do we live in?

A simple opinion of Life

My personal opinion on how human perceives imagery and
exists in this world. I will use a simple linear algebra method
equivalent to an undergraduate level course, to evaluate the
theory of projection, imagery, null spaces, and dimensions.

Samuel Ramna Lie
7/9/2014

Samuel Lie
People often forget or do not know in how many dimensions humans do live in. Normally, when
we ask people regarding this, people will probably answer that human lives in a three dimensional
world. But, what exactly is the definition of dimension? And what is the meaning behind living in a
three dimensional world? How does it relate to the famous 3-D theater at your local cinema?
Lets go back to the definition of a space. We live in a space. Imagine yourself living in a Cartesian
coordinate paper and moves as a dot. In facts, when we see ourselves from the outer space, we can
only see humans as dots. If we see humans from the Hubble telescope computer, we will see
humans as moving dots with speed and direction, which can illustrate the notion of vectors. The
computer can trace and display our movement as a curve or line, which illustrates a two
dimensional space, that consists of two lines as its axes. Those two lines must be linearly
independent, create a plane and that all the space in two dimensional worlds can be depicted as a
linear combination of those two vectors. Those vectors are called basis vectors and none of them
should be a linear dependent of the others, because if it is, that particular vector is redundant and
should be eliminated. The span of those two bases vectors will make all of the two dimensional
space. This can be illustrated as such:








You can always depict any point in two dimensional spaces, denoted by two axes, with linear
combination of two standard basis vectors. In this example, the point <3, 4> = 3<1, 0> + 4<0, 1>.
Lets get back to the topic. The exact definition for the dimension of a subspace in V of R
n
is the
number of vectors in the basis of V. In fact, the dim(R
n
) = n , means that in an n-dimensional
world, there can be at most n numbers of linear independent vectors.
In regards to linear independence, we require no non-trivial solution between them, which means
the solution for c1V1 + c2V2++ cmVm=0-vector, is that all the Cs are zero. This is because we should
eliminate all the redundant vectors that can be represented as a linear combination of the other
vectors. We can see this by listing the vectors:
<3, 4> V1
V2
Samuel Lie
We need to show, V
redundant
= c1V1 + c2V2++ cmVm
Let assume, c1V1 + c2V2++ cmVm = 0
We pick a non-zero c and move it to the right side; c1V1 + c2V2++ cm-1Vm-1= cmVm
We then divide both sides by cm; We will get (c1/cm)V1 + (c2/cm) V2++ (cm-1/cm)Vm-1= Vm
We then get a non-trivial solution and Vm is a redundant vector.
The reason why I want to talk about the context of linear dependence is because it can relate back
to the context of our unique existence in this world. Interestingly, it turns out that for an x in a
subspace V in R
n
, x can be written in a unique way as a linear combination of the basis vectors in V
of R
n
. In other words, if x = c1V1 + c2V2++ cmVm , and you thought that there exists x = d1V1 +
d2V2++ dmVm. In this case, c1 must be equal to d1 and c2 must be equal to d2, etc. until cm. This
shows that a particular point in space can only be uniquely defined by a linear combination of the
basis vectors in that space. To show this,
Suppose: x = c1V1 + c2V2++ cmVm
x = d1V1 + d2V2++ dmVm
We want to show that the Cs and the corresponding Ds are equal. We can do this by subtracting
the two equations, we will get:
(c1-d1)V1+(c2-d2)V2++(cm-dm)Vm = 0-vector
Since all the bases Vs are linearly independent, the solution for the zero vectors must be that the
coefficient is zero, which implies:
(c1-d1)=0;
c1=d1; c2=d2;
Thus, we have shown that there can be a unique way to depict a point in space. In relation to our
existence in this world, our location can be depicted uniquely in this world and now we can
question, what if our space is the same of others? Does this mean that we can occupy space
together with other matter (overlap) or the things in the same space as we do turns into us? This
may be related to the fact that our body cant overlap in this world. This conclusion goes back to
what we studied in high school chemistry class about the definition of a matter which needs to have
mass and takes up space.
The phrase takes up space may be related to the fact that there can be only one matter that can
takes up a space. This topic can go complicated with some introduction of the behavior of electron
in space, or even Higgs boson particle, etc. We wont go that far.
Samuel Lie
Still confused with the concept of dimension? Lets see some example. Let use recall the
subspaces in R
3
.
1. The zero-vector consists of a basis of empty set. Note that zero-vector is not linearly
independent since the zero-vector is redundant and will get eliminated. Thus, the
dimension of this subspace is zero.
2. V= R
3
with the basis <1, 0, 0>, <0, 1, 0>; and <0, 0, 1>, which will compass all points in
three dimension, thus the dim(V) = 3, since the number of vectors in the basis is three.
3. V= plane through the origin, which is often called as a two dimensional plane. The V will
be the span of two vectors, which cause the dim(V) = 2.
4. V = line through the origin. The basis for this is any vector v in that line, which v also span,
thus the basis if only the vector v. dim(v) = 1
Lets visit the matrix example:
Let A = [

]
What is the dimension of the image and the null space of A?
We need to get rref(A) = [

]
We notice that there are two free variables and two columns with leading one. In fact the sum of
the rank and the free variables are actually the sum of the dimension of the null space and the
dimension of the image respectively, which sums up to be equal to the number of variables. In
other words, the dimension of the image is the number of leading one or linearly independent
column vector, while the dimension of the null space represents the number of dependent/ free
variables.
We will avoid determining the image and kernel for that matrix, because we want the intuition
behind it instead. We can interpret the dimension of the image as the number of axis that the
object can be positioned on.
Going back to our main topic, we, humans, live in a three dimensional world with an additional
temporal space called the time dimension, so in simpler word, we live in a three dimensional
spatial world with one temporal dimension called time. The main question is that do we see things
in three dimensions, four dimensions, or two dimensions?
In fact, we can analyze this through a simple projection case from R
3
to R
2
, where we want to
project a 3D object to a 2D plane. We, humans, even though live in a three dimensional world,
actually see things under two dimensional vision. Please take a moment to think again. Do we see
things in two dimensions? People may think that we see things in 3-D because we can notice
Samuel Lie
depth, height and width, but actually our vision is an illusion of 2D with shadow, just like when you
watch film in your television. Please take time to think, because this is a concept that is hard to
understand and may be controversial with your lines of thought. In fact, if we live in a two
dimensional spatial world, we can see vision under one dimension. As such, we see things under
(n-1) dimension if we life in a world of n dimension.
Lets see this example of projection of a 3-D plane into a piece of 2D paper:






We can see the image above.
In what dimension do we see it? We actually see it in two dimensions. What happened to the
other one dimension since the plane is a 3D plane? The arrows portray what happen to the other
dimension. The other one dimension got compressed or squashed to that picture of a plane, all
the line (1-D) perpendicular to the paper and out from the monitor you see this paper with , got
compressed to the plane. On the other hand, the remaining 2D image became what we see as the
image of that plane. That one dimensional space that got compressed onto what we called the null
space, because that is result of the transformation which causes that vector to goes to become the
zero-vector. In fact, that is the definition of the kernel of a transformation.
In conclusion, by mapping a 3D space to a 2D space, we must lose one dimension. Our brain
works similarly with processing imagery, thus our vision is actually two dimensions. With
additional of light and our conscience, we often get the illusion of our vision as being 3-
Dimensional through shadows, even though its just our brains process of imagery.
This may sound too abstract, but I need you to understand so that you can be more aware of your
existence in this world. You may think, how about time? We are aware of time progression. How
do we deal with that? Thats a different story than this, because time is a temporal space, which
requires a deeper understanding. In fact, maybe only God understands.



Samuel Lie
Lets go back to our example earlier to make things easier with matrix:
We know A = [

] is a (3x4) matrix which is definition transformation from R

4
to R
3
,
but after we row reduce it we notice that rref(A) = [

] can be seen as a (2x4) matrix

which transform R
4
to R
2
, because the last row is just zeroes. Which one is true? In fact, the rref is
the one that we should use, because from earlier, we realize that the image of A has a dimension of
two, while we also have 2 null spaces /kernel. In conclusion, we just transformed 4 dimensions to a
two dimension image and 2 dimension null spaces using the matrix A. the null spaces will get
squashed to the 2-dimensional image just as the previous plane example.
Going back to the main topic, to make things easier to be understood, imagine yourself living in a
2-Dimensional plane, which means that you are living in a sheet of paper as a dot. What can you
see? You can only see one dimensional object as lines. How about 4-D? I dont know because we,
humans, never really experience seeing things 3 dimensionally. It may be that we can see the back
of an object or see through objects.
In relation to our existence in this world, if we assume time is the fourth dimension. People living
in fourth dimension can see things in 3-D, but I believe no one exist in the fourth dimension. How
about God? We may think God live in the fifth dimension. God divine time and can travel
through time. Nonetheless, we now know that our thoughts, minds, and our existence are just tiny
little things in this multidimensional world.
This is just a reminder to you:
Daniel 2:21(KJB) And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up
kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding.