Johann Friedrich Zöllner

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Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (November 8, 1834, Berlin – April 25, 1882, Leipzig) was a German astrophysicist who studied optical illusions. He was also an early psychical investigator. He was Professor of Physical Astronomy at the University of Leipzig; and a member of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences.

J. K. F. Zollner.jpg

Fourth dimension

Professor Zöllner developed experimental inquiry into the theory of a fourth dimension of space with the aid of American medium Henry Slade.He wrote his observations in the book Transcendental Physics. An account of experimental Investigations, which was translated from German, with a Preface and Appendices, by Charles Carleton Massey. In 1881 Mme. Blavatsky wrote that his book "should be in the library of everyone who pretends to hold intelligent opinions upon the subjects of Force, Matter, and Spirit."[1]

She added:

He is also a profound metaphysician, the friend and compeer of the brightest contemporary intellects of Germany. He had long surmised that besides length, breadth, and thickness, there might be a fourth dimension of space, and that if this were so then that would imply another world of being, distinct from our three-dimensional world, with its own inhabitants fitted to its four-dimensional laws and conditions, as we are to ours of three dimensions.[2]

Notes

  1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. III (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1995), 15.
  2. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. III (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1995), 15.