Dimension

Dimension. An element or respect of extension of a logical universe of such a nature that the same term which is individual in one such element of extension is not so in another. Thus, we may consider different persons as individual in one respect, while they may be divisible in respect to time, and in respect to different admissible hypothetical states of things, etc. This is to be widely distinguished from different universes, as, for example, of things and of characters, where any given individual belonging to one cannot belong to another. The conception of a multidimensional logical universe is one of the fecund conceptions which exact logic owes to O. H. Mitchell. Schröder, in his then second volume, where he is far below himself in many respects, pronounces this conception “untenable.” But a doctrine which has, as a matter of fact, been held by Mitchell, Peirce, and others, on apparently cogent grounds, without meeting any attempt at refutation in about twenty years, may be regarded as being, for the present, at any rate, tenable enough to be held.