Free structuring a bit, noting some of this down. Not a coherent thought or theory right now.

3 dimensions, matter, sometimes I think of a 3d object (box or cube) plus time as a fourth dimension, like current state of the object and past or future state of the object.

But time is implicit in the object itself.

Start with void (0d). Ok, add a point. What you've done is create two possible states. One preceded the other, therefore, time.

Time as a construct is just more than one state, with something different between the two states, and possibly the concept that the two states are related by sequence (first state a, then state b).

This opens the door for causality, the possibility that something in state a caused a change that resulted in state b.

And all we've got is state a (void) and state b (point). Maybe we consider this 1d, with that first dimension actually being time.

So a point, mathematically, has a location. A location means that the point is some distance from a reference. You plot a point on a graph, some distance from an x and y axis, but that is getting a little ahead of ourselves. For now, distance actually supposes two points - our point in the void we started with, and some other reference point.

Physics tells us distance = rate * time. There's that time concept again, already in play. But if you have two points, you could draw a line between them, and if you are considering the distance of that line, that means it must be possible to fall somewhere along that line that is neither point a or point b. If you have a line, I think you're still in 1d, but you've already got a lot happening, with multiple states (infinite states?) between point and reference, time is constructed, causality is at least a possibilty... and we need a third point to get to 2 dimensions. This third point is somewhere not on the line between points 1 and 2.

Orthogonality - I can take my line between points 1 and 2, and draw a perpendicular line from it to point 3.

These three points in the void now constitute a plane. We see these in graphs, where points are plotted some distance from x and y axes. Now we are really in what we consider 2d, or at least one dimension less than we think of ourselves in.

Now take another reference point, somewhere outside that plane. You can draw an orthogonal line to it from somewhere on the plane. We've gotten to 3d now, but time has been implicit since we left the void.

We can map our 3d objects, see distances between points on that object, see it in 3d space that also contains points not on (or in) that object - but can we imagine a point not in 3d space?

I don't think we really can. Not in such a way that I can draw an orthogonal line from our 3d object to that point outside of our 3d space.

Maybe it has to be done along time, where that point is the future state of our object in space.

So now we would have a past state (no point), a current state (point, defined as some distance from 3 reference points) and a future state (point is somewhere else).

And I don't know that we've really even touched causality yet - is that itself like another dimension? If we look at potential future state as a 4th dimension, then maybe causality is a 5th dimension.

Am I willing to accept infinite future states as possible, causal or not? I suppose I have to.

Could I also accept infinite prior states, causal or not?

Is there one history, or only what we assume as the most likely (causal) history?

And what would quantum mechanics make of all this?

These are some of the questions I go to sleep with at night. Thanks for tolerating my note.

A lot of this was better explained by Descartes, in both mathematical and philosophical senses, but I don't find his conclusions to satisfy all my questions.