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986.028
In respect to those definitions I was taught, between
1905 and 1913 at the
private preparatory school then most highly regarded
by Harvard, that "the properties of a
point" are nonexistent__that a point is nondimensional
or infradimensional, weightless,
and timeless. The teacher had opened the day's lesson
by making a white chalk mark on
the cleanly washed-off blackboard and saying, "This
is a point." I was next taught that a
line is one dimensional and consists of a "straight"
row of nondimensional points__and I
am informed that today, in 1978, all schoolchildren
around the world are as yet being so
taught. Since such a line lacks three-dimensionality,
it too is nonexistent to the second
power or to "the square root of nonexistence." We were
told by our mathematics teacher
that the plane is a raft of tangentially parallel rows
of nonexistent lines__ergo, either a
third power or a "cube root of nonexistence"__while the
supposedly "real" cube of three
dimensions is a rectilinear stack of those nonexistent
planes and therefore must be either a
fourth power or a fourth root of nonexistence. Since
the cube lacked weight, temperature,
or duration in time, and since its empty 12-edged frame
of nonexistent lines would not
hold its shape, it was preposterously nondemonstrable__ergo,
a treacherous device for
students and useful only in playing the game of deliberate
self-deception. Since it was
arbitrarily compounded of avowedly nonexistent points,
the socially accepted three-
dimensional reality of the academic system was not "derived
from observation and
study"__ergo, was to me utterly unscientific.
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