If we comprehend and represent a temporal series of events or stages, a process, as a whole, then these stages come to lie side by side, establishing a spatial dimension, so to speak.
That’s all there is to it. That way we get the whole process at a glance. We know what happens, what did happen and will happen.
Spatial arrangement is the expression of knowledge, space is always a space of knowledge, and knowledge is always spatial. Knowledge is the ultimate dimension (of space).
The three-dimensional space, being so familiar to us, is essentially an extremely complex construction of our mind, conditioned by our manner of perception (especially with the eyes). Its apparent simplicity is simply an expression of our familiarity with it.
We do not have to construct anything consciously, provided we are generally able to behave normally. The program that is responsible for this construction is elementary in that it is part of our basic mental configuration.
It constitutes not only space, but also everything in space, which means: the whole universe.
The familiar three-dimensionality is one possible structure of space. Many others are possible, too. Although the expression “possible” may be misleading here, since every possible structure is actually existing. No matter whether or not it is presently realized. Like a program, which exists, no matter that it is currently active — or not.
Space embraces all possible structures, as a framework, so to speak, allowing each structure to appear. Nonetheless, space does never appear without any kind of structure.
In our system structures may be placed, roughly speaking, somewhere between space and thing. Unlike those they are flexible and dynamic.
Programs create continuity where otherwise there are only gaps. They interconnect data far away from each other, making them lie instantly side by side. They rearrange the things, restructure space — and thus create a new space.
A lot of what can be done with pictures of reality is not possible in reality itself. A model or a virtual reality is governed by other laws than the actual one. Still, that does not mean that there are no laws there.
Thus the presence of — as far as we can see — universal laws of nature does not indicate that there is actually one unique reality and that something following those laws cannot be virtual as well, on a very deep level. Or that those laws do not depend on the way the world is received and represented.
The opposite is much more likely: that reality is always somehow pictured and virtual.
After all, there is no logical distinction between a virtual and the actual reality.
Every image of the world is actively created. Even the seemingly passive sensory perception is actually active. As well as every scientific measurement. So that all that we know about the world is basically a construction.
All reality is constructed. We make it real.
Looking for knowledge mostly means to look for a suitable model of the real world that offers suggestions about the best course of actions to us, according to our needs and the given circumstances.
Such a model can be communicated and jointly developed, thus enabling us to gather our forces and act as a whole — albeit with a certain delay and usually with frictional losses.
That’s the way explicit knowledge works.
Knowing relies on conventions of doing. We learn to apply our knowledge rightly: then we have really got it.
Verbal as well as visual expressions of knowledge serve as anchor points that make it easier for us to recapitulate the right actions. Yet, they may become an end in themselves, in case that our business is almost totally about such symbols. In this way complex constructions get built, self-contained artificial worlds.
These virtual realities gather our activity and transmit the resulting energy to everyone functioning as part of them. This makes those artificial realities become real. They provide us with all we need and give us access to all the other levels of reality.
The human reality is determined by social habits and joint activities. It is carried and formed by the language and many other media, which are made, in the main, for human interactivity. Language, knowledge, and, last but not least, reality, are social phenomena.
Whether or not we want to — we are forced to look even at the non-human reality through the eyes that we have got, eyes that are focussed on human relations and interactions.
And, in fact, we can see ourselves reaching much further than expected. The scope of our kinship is much larger than initially realized.
Indentifying ourselves with humanity rather than with more limited concepts like nations or so may already be a step forward; however, in the end it is just as artificial and limited.
Differentiation is characteristic of knowledge as we know it, definitely. But much more of the essence is that what the distinct things have in common. To consolidate this, sometimes differentiation is appropriate — though still remaining just a secondary function, a product, not the very base of knowledge.