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Right- and left-handed symmetry does not occur in the configuration of dead matter. We have instances of symmetry about an axis, but not about a plane. It can be argued that the occurence of symmetry in two dimensions involves the existence of a three-dimensional process, as when a stone falls into water and makes rings of ripples, or as when a mass of soft material rotates about an axis. It can be argued that symmetry in any number of dimensions is the evidence of an action in a higher dimensionality. Thus considering living beings, there is an evidence both in their structure, and their different mode of activity, of a something coming in from without into the inorganic world.


-- Charles Howard Hinton, "The Fourth Dimension" (chapter 7, "The evidences for a fourth dimension").
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jayrandom

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