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Ah, I always love a bit of theoretical physics! - particularly for its "mindfuck" qualities, if you'll pardon the French. I discovered this video entitled Imagining the Tenth Dimension (see below) courtesy of my younger brother who is in his second year of a science degree and who is also interested in the philosophy of science. As far as the content of this video is concerned, I think I'm only convinced up until the fifth dimension. If we take the idea of "virtual" to describe all of those possibilities in a given set-up that remain un-actualised, it is precisely this which, in the video, is given the name of the "fifth dimension". The first four dimensions (height, width, depth, and duration) all exist in the realm of the "actual", but the fifth dimension onwards exist only in the realm of the virtual. I've thought a lot about the virtual in previous theorisations, but until now, I'd never really thought of it as a "dimension", in the sense that height, width, depth, and duration are. However, I think I like the formulation a lot, and feel it will be incredibly helpful for me in my work! For instance: So many of us remain trapped within four dimensions, but to become cognizant of the fifth dimension is surely to become aware of the fact that what "is" is only one among infinite possibilities that exist in the virtual, and that at any moment, any one of those possibilities can be actualised through a combination of chance and will. It allows us an appreciation that what "is" is not necessarily what must be, and that things might always be otherwise. Reality, then, becomes reconceived as a dynamic process, rather than in terms of static being. As activists, it is precisely the fifth dimension that is called upon in our imaginations as we both re-imagine how the world might be otherwise and struggle to make that imagined better world a reality! The battle-cry of the World Social Forum says it all: "Another World is Possible!" I would contend that the imagination emerges as central here, seeing that it is precisely the faculty of the imagination which we employ in order to behold that which does not yet exist in actuality. I would add that the imagination becomes central in another sense too: Let's say we liberate the concept of the imagination from the human psyche and use it to denote the very realm of the virtual; that is, the fifth dimension from which everything emerges or actualises. That which we know and which we take for reality is but one manifestation of an infinite number of possible worlds, and the realm of the actual (i.e. the so-called "real world") is continually transmutating through relay loops back and forth between the fifth dimension. If we apply the term "imagination" to this realm of the virtual, then we might say that reality itself is imaginative! Anyway, here's the video. Enjoy!