is scale a dimension?

[polytrip]

You may say that all of the four common dimensions more or less allow for the very idea of scale to even exist, since scale is something that exists in these four directions. You may say that scale is not a dimension for that reason.
But at the same time it is the other way round and it is scale that allows for the other dimensions to even be thought or measured.

I want to illustrate what i mean by the example of the musical tone.
Every musical tone is a frequency. within the realm of music we use frequency's as well; vibrato's, rhytm, variation in volume, etc.
Yet, no one would say that a vibrato or repetitive rhytm creates a false tone because of the interference of the rhytm of the vibrato with the frequency of the tone. Very fast programmed vibrato's do this however. So the fact that we consider vibrato as a vibration and a tone as a tone has to do with difference in scale.

We can measure distances because of simmilar differences in scale in our physical world. We measure distances in units, but we presuppose that at some point when we stop disecting space and time in smaller units, space and time are fluid; We think a meter is a meter, because it is 100 centimeters, wich is 1000 millimeters, and so on, but at some point we stop thinking and measuring smaller units, simply because we suppose that you can infinetely go further disecting space and time, because we suppose they are fluid.

But they are not.
The only reason why we can make this assumption is because of the immense difference in scale.

Scale is something that determines our reality as much as the dimensions length, width, depth and time. Look at how 3D space seems 2D space at small scales, a bit like how the 3D earth seems a 2D surface to us, because of scale differences.

Maybe it isn't a dimension like the other four, but time isn't a dimension exactly like the spatial ones either.
Maybe scale should be seen as a sort of meta-dimension, determining the nature and implications of the other dimensions.
So this is why i ask the question 'is scale a dimension?'

 

[jamie]

Interesting..something I have sort of thought but never put into words..you are good at describing these sorts of things polytrip..

THe muscial analogy is a good one..anyone who plays music should get it.

 

[balaganist]

Really interesting.

Yes its something I come across a lot in working with sound and synthesis. The vibrato analogy is perfect. If you modulate the frequency of an oscillator playing a pure tone (sine wave) with another very slow oscillator, you will get a slow up and down motion of the frequency (weeaaoooweeaaoooweeaaoooweeaaooo).

If you beging to speed it up at some point it becomes more like a character in the sound, at which point it is like a musical vibrato. If you speed it up further, it reaches a stage when the vibration is so fast that we hear it as an extra harmonic in the sound, i.e. it adds complexity to the sound. This is known as audio-rate modulation. Its the basis for a form of synthesis called FM synthesis (FM=Frequency Modulation). Its a great way of getting harmonically rich sounds. Anyway, the point is there is a threshold where we percieve the extra harmonic on a different scale.

Its an interesting way of looking at how we percieve other dimensions of our reality... light is also a spectrum of frequencies, and i read somewhere that taste and smell are also... I guess touch also works like this, in that something bumpy, when made finer becomes like a texture where we cannot differentiate the individual bumps; it is just a continuous surface with texture.

I post a sound example I just made to illustrate

The demo is made with 3 oscillators. Starts as just 1 then, osc 2 comes in slowly and speeds up, until it becomes new harmonics in the tone. Then osc 3 starts to modulate osc 2, at the beginning audible and then as it crosses the theshold becomes a contiunous tone again, but this time more complex sounds are made (multiplying the harmonics again).
I play with frequency and depth a bit (may be too long!) and then wind it back down.

 

[balaganist]

Also .. when you slow a sound wave right down it reaches a point where we know longer hear the vibrations, although we may see or hear them. Similarly we have an upper range of hearing... so we only really get a small section of the total scale, which is potentially infinite in both directions (lower/slower to faster/higher) .. same with light. So it may be deduced that what we percieve as our reality is just a tiny blip on a massive continuum of frequencies in different dimensions. Vibration is energy and matter, its like the fundamental structure of the universe.

 

[۩]

Precisely balaganist. Hyperspace is composed of a higher octave of frequencies not normally sensible until you boost the neurotransmitter.
Hence why all the colors look so...different
blending perfectly with the cymatic sounds emanating from your heating heart.
Futuristic. As if a part of some technology thousands, millions of years ahead of Our time.
Connecting you.
Here, All is Reflection.

Think about our brains operational frequencies. They aren't exactly audible considering they are near 10hz give or take a dime usually, fluctuating with your awareness
down for sleepy, up for alert.

I've always thought about death, and riding that frequency down...down...down......I bet time would dilate so extremely..if you catch my drift.

There are waveforms in this universe that are light years long....(try putting that in a Hz)

 

[polytrip]

those are carrierwave-like sounds. Cool.

 

[PerPLexED]

Check out einstein condensates.

There is it in a nutshell, a bose einstein condensate makes it actually happen. When you start going into the quantum levels of the spectrum, incredible things begin to happen. Another good example is weight. Most animals have a fairly good ratio of weight/muscle mass to how much they can carry.However, if you look at an ant, it will pick things up that are in the high multiples of its body weight. Although it is logical, as the musical one is, it puts into perspective how amazing the quantum level is. What aren't we seeing, that is happening right before our eyes? What aren't we hearing? Oh the questions that arise!