Surely you understand that one cannot reasonably offer uniformitarian
theory in defense of uniformitarian geology. Your burden is to explain
nature in terms of uniformitarian theory, and that burden is indeed
yours, not mine. You might begin by explaining the objects that
Petersen shows in his plates 32 to 40.
I find no fault with anything that you quote from Barrow and Tipler or
from Courant and Hilbert. I would only suggest that you have
misconstrued the meaning. I suggest that an accurate paraphrase of
their statements would be that if we did occupy a world of more than
three dimensions we would still be able to survey only three dimensions
by the use of light or sound because these carriers are constrained to
three dimensions.
In fact, in his epilogue Petersen concludes that the human soul
extends into that fourth dimension so our actual domain is in truth one
in at least four dimensions. However, in agreement with Barrow and
Tipler, we perceive only three dimensions of that realm by means of
sensory perception because, presumably, those perceptions are ultimately
electromagnetic (three dimensional) in nature.
Joseph Mastropaolo