I'm fascinated by the mathematical beauty of Platonic solids.

To see that nature conspires to create dimensions and geometries that go far beyond any geometers have dreamed of one need only consider the human body and its many intricacies. Blood cells and hormones are generally limited to following prescribed paths dictated by blood vessels which themselves have their appointed routes. Similarly nerve impulses are confined to and limited by the branchings of the nervous system. Food ingested but not absorbed by body cells travels the circuitous, serpentine length of the digestive tract, once - - - in embryonic times - - - a straight undiverting tube, to appear once more at the anus as excrement. All of these convoluted paths and wanderings involve dimension and geometry, though not of the Euclidean kind, nor of any other described mathematical type.

Surgeons must study and master human anatomy and its many variants because when the knife is inserted within the human frame it may not follow any simple geometry as it makes its way through the integument into the subcutaneous tissues and onward to its ultimate destination, at the risk of serious and possibly permanent injury. If in fact dimension has to do with independent magnitudes that serve to define the location of an element within a given set, if dimension refers to the least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space, and if this is to be interpreted functionally as well as structurally, then we must conclude that the human body has many more dimensions than three.