Comparing Volumes

In Chapter III.3 we discovered that comparing shapes in 2-dimensions was noticeably more complicated than comparing plain line segments. The proverbial optimist might of course declare that we should have expected 1-dimension to be rather special, and that, now we know (more or less) how to make the jump from 1- to 2-dimensions, we shall probably find that 3-, 4- and higher dimensions are really no more difficult than 2-dimensions. The pessimist, on the other hand, might point out that, since 2-dimensions gave rise to so many unexpected difficulties, we must surely expect 3-, 4- and higher dimensions to become steadily more complicated.