Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2000 18:42:05 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Graham Cleverley
A less metyphysical answer is that we normally assume we live in a Euclidean space in which distance depends on the squares of the difference on each axes v. Pythagoras and trigonometry.
Einstein's Special Theory also assumed a quasi-Euclidean space, even though the time dimension has a negative coefficient - 
(x2 + y2 + z2 - ct2)
You can get involved with spaces in which the square doesn't appear, but not many of us do that. Not often at least.
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