The principle of emergent dimensionality states that 3-dimensional reality does not exist observer-independently but emerges, for a living agent, from an omnidimensional graph of nature that contains all unobservable extra dimensions.
A dimension n is usually defined as a natural number of coordinates needed to specify the position of a point within the Euclidean space ℝn. However, this is not the only possible definition[1][2] of a dimension: analytic continuations from positive dimensions[2][3] define negative dimensions[4]; fractional (or fractal), including negative[5], dimensions consistent with experimental results[6][7]; complex[2], including complex fractional[8], dimensions can also be considered[9][10].
Furthermore, it is known, in particular, that
The question then arises as to why living observers perceive the world in three real spatial dimensions and imaginary time.
It was shown[18] that there is a continuum of differentiable manifolds that are homeomorphic (i.e., shape preserving) but non-diffeomorphic (i.e., nonsmooth) to the Euclidean space ℝ4, known as exotic ℝ4, and this property is absent in other dimensions. This mathematical property is exploited by biological evolution as it ensures that an individually memorized object preserves the shape of an individually perceived[13] object (it is homeomorphic), but this preservation is non-smooth (it is non-diffeomorphic). This, in turn, ensures that the first two Lewontin principles for evolutionary change[19] (phenotypic variation and differential fitness) hold. Furthermore, in ℝ4, there are six regular, convex polytopes, whereas there are five (Platonic solids) in ℝ3, and only three for n > 4.
The emergent dimensionality corroborates, in particular, with
In assembly theory, objects are defined by the histories of their formation. The more complex a given object is, the less likely an identical copy can be observed without the selection of some information-driven mechanism that generated that object.