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I don't know about physicists sweating - I can see there being credence in further dimensions - we are only aware of the 4 we have access to, and one of which only in a limited way. Yet this didn't stop Einstein coming up with the idea of 'curved' spacetime. If you think about this for a moment, it suggests a 5th dimension right there, for something to curve, it needs a place to curve 'into'. Perhaps mass is simply an expression or movement in this 5th dimension that drags the fabric of the other 4 with it. So mass could be thought of as a kind of dimension (it effects the other 4 so intimately, it isn't too much of a conceptual leap to consider it as a dimension) - if mass and energy are equivalent, maybe it's just a matter of translating the mass (or some movement of things in the 5th dimension) into the remaining ones, E=MC2 If mass(and as such matter) is our perception of a 5th dimension, then what other properties might be purely dimensional effects?
I don't know, I'm making this up - but am happy to reinterpret my sensual perceptions in terms of some abstract space - for those who are interested, try reading Flatland, a really thought-provoking (and easy to read) book about a certain Mr. Square who lives in Flatland, and his ventures into various other geometric dimensions - it makes you think. Similarly, Plato's Allegory of the Cave might offer a way to look at these sort of conceptual problems and make some sense of them.
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