Quote:
Originally Posted by filtherton
There is also the significance of fours, as in four dimensional timespace. Some string theorists believe that string theory can be accurately described in four dimensions.
Every number has as much significance as can be subscribed to it. Two is just easier to see.
|
I disagree--there are too many dualities in physics that are really fundamental, compared to the trialities (?) or quadralities. Even the examples I gave for one-ness and three-ness were pretty tentative--the grouping of three quarks is not really a triality--each of the three quarks grouped together is not the opposite of the other two (2 of one type, one of another). In contrast, a positive electric charge is the opposite of a negative one, a wave can be considered the opposite of a particle, energy can be considered the opposite of time. A particle's opposite is the antiparticle.
At the moment, I can't think of any examples of true triality, quadrality, etc in physics (i.e., where each item can be considered an 'opposite' of the other items in the grouping) other than 3-dimensional space (without time) or 4-dimensional space (with time) or 5-dimensional space (with Kaluza-Klein theory) or even higher (with superstring theories--I've seen no superstring theory currently being considered that has less than 11 dimensions?). The question of the # of dimensions in the universe is still being debated--it's not that all of these are examples of opposition are fundamental--only one of these is bound to be correct.
In nature and chemistry, it's more commonplace to see this sort of thing happening--a chemical flip between different configurations (cyclohexane flips between about 3 of these), a flower may have pentalateral symmetry. Because of the ways our eyes work, there are three primary colors (red green blue or cyan magenta yellow) But as has already been mentioned, even in nature and chemisty, the overwhelming majority of structures show duality (or bilateral symmetry), if they show any such symmetry at all.