Mathematical game: Notre-Dame de Paris and the fourth dimension

Let us reread what Marcel Proust writes in On the side of Swan. He speaks of a modest church in Normandy and not of Notre-Dame de Paris, but his idea can be transposed: “ All this made her for me something entirely different from the rest of the city: an edifice occupying, so to speak, a four-dimensional space – the fourth being that of Time. ”

What is the relationship between the fourth dimension and Notre-Dame de Paris?

We are used to the first three dimensions, length, width and height that define the classic space that we already meet at Euclid, three centuries before our era. The concept of the fourth dimension to speak of duration sees its first appearance in theEncyclopedia under the pen of Jean le Rond d’Alembert. Nowadays, in mathematics, the fourth dimension is only one dimension among others, even if Albert Einstein uses it as d’Alembert in the precise sense of time, in theory of relativity.

Responnse :

That we use Marcel’s literary approach Proust, those of the mathematician or physicist, this means that a monument like Notre-Dame de Paris is not a simple building of our three-dimensional space, it is part of a four-dimensional space, the fourth being time, the one who passes, and which connects the French to those who built the cathedrals … and therefore to each other, whether they are Catholic or not. Notre-Dame is at the heart of our history. Its drone has sounded for all the great events of our common history. Notre-Dame cannot disappear without France disappearing with it, which, likewise, is not a simple geographical area but has a history that the French cannot deny without denying themselves. This is why it is vital to restore Notre-Dame de Paris.