Dimensional Collapse
Perspective is a most subtle discovery in mathematical studies
Leonardo da Vinci (Attributed)
Collapsing dimensions sound like the premise of a creepy science fiction film.
But art, engineering, and architecture have used them for centuries.
The angles in (A’s) 12th-century painting do not truly represent what the eye sees. Art, up to the 1500s, suffered from this technique.
But with the advent of Brunelleschi’s drawings of Florentine buildings in the early 1400s, artists, engineers, and architects could offer visualizations that more closely mimicked reality. The trick was using a vanishing point where all dimensions necked down to a solitary spot. In (B), it’s in the sky between the central figures of Socrates and Plato.
In my upcoming book with Wiley, Hypernomics: Using Hidden Dimensions to Solve Unseen Problems, I show how simultaneously understanding multiple markets mandates dimensional collapse. Hypernomics has a five-market, 16D drawing representing 3% of world GDP. Hypernomics needs collapsing dimensions to solve hidden problems that artificially constrained approaches cannot see, let alone explain (C).
Modern business analysis mandates dimensional collapse, as does modern art.