This topic could have been put in Popular Sciences, since it's about maths and logic, but I think it fits better in philosophy. We're at a kind of boundary between logic and philosophy here...

These days I'm reading a novel, A Time Odyssey I: Time's Eye (by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter). And in this novel, some characters find an object and determine (with laser instruments) that the object is a perfect sphere. Then they calculate its dimensions and discover (with understandable astonishment) that its circumference divided by its diameter is equal to... exactly three, not Pi.

I was wondering if, in our universe, the laws of nature might have been different. And I mean, entirely different. I know this sounds completely fucked-up, but could two and two have made five rather than four?

Following the same idea, could there have been four primary colors rather than just three? Or, even more weird, could there have been a fourth dimension?

I know this sounds utterly insane...

Boundary? Logic is philosophy.

Its always been the assumption of science, when making any statement, that the laws of nature and science are the same everywhere as they are here. Perhaps its flawed, but without it, nothing can be said because we'd be at a perpetual standstill arguing over a subject we have no proof about/can't test. Kind like assuming we exist and the world exists before going into a discussion about morals. If you can't get over the former, well, you can't discuss anything.

There is a "4th dimension" to something, its something added to the three demensions of length, width, and height. Sometimes people say its time, but it can be a spacial measurement too.

Moved to Popular Science

Ok so heres the deal:

1)

its not fucked up, its just trivial. The idea we call "two" is defined in such a way that when we perform the operation of "addition" on it and another "two", we get the idea we express as "four," which in turn is defined in such a way that "two plus two equals" it. This is all a matter of definitions. Look up "Abstract Algebra" and "Group Theory" for more info.


2)

just as in the first part, part of the definition of a "circle" is that the "ratio" of its "circumference" to its "diameter" is the irrational number we symbolize with the greek letter Pi. In another mathematical system it may be different but if they are using our system 3 is in ALL certainty impossible, whether in our universe or any other.

3)

Primary colors and dimensions are another matter entirely as these are physical properties of our universe and our being not inherent qualities of our mathematical system.

For the primary colors thing, look here to see what primary colors actually are. If you do you'll see that they are just a result of our biological structure and are not, in any way, a fundamental "truth."

As for dimensions(hehe, this is gonna be fun...):

*it is commonly accepted that there are, in fact, 4 dimensions in our universe: 3 of space and 1 of time.

*mathematically speaking, there can be as many dimensions in a given ...anything as you can imagine

*some physicists believe that there are anywhere from 10 to 42 or more dimensions in which our reality exists. Look up "string theory"about this, its AWESOME!

*one proposed cause of the Big Bang is that our universe collided with another universe which exists in the same, higher dimensional "multi-verse", releasing the enormous amounts of energy that created all that we know.

*seriously, look up "string theory", or at least watch a pbs special called "The Elegant Universe". It does a REALLY good job of explaining this stuff

The End

Oh, Delta:

thats an assumption of Newtonian physics. Things got a little crazier when Einstein and this guy named Lorentz came around.