Man And The Universe

Although the sf tradition from Mary Shelley through Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, and others of course, to Poul Anderson and his successors addresses the relationship between mankind and the universe, it is possible to appreciate a particular work, like a Dominic Flandry novel or a Star Trek episode, without contemplating philosophical or cosmological issues. However, the issues are always present. Flandry spends time on Starkad, Merseia, Irumclaw, Wayland, Talwin, Shalmu, Llynathawr and Dido, just in his first three novels, and Kirk visits a planet a week. Each such visit is an encounter with an extraterrestrial environment. The universe is bigger than Earth. Only sf addresses this fact.

In fact, "the universe" can mean not only everything beyond the Terrestrial atmosphere but also everything outside human society, like the laws of science, e.g.:

What is the principle of life? Can electricity reanimate a corpse?

Can an artificial "brain" be made to think?

Is heavier than air flight possible? (Wells wrote more about aircraft than about spacecraft.)

Can a substance be opaque to gravity? (Anderson's equivalents of Wells' Cavorite are the gyrogravitics in Tales Of The Flying Mountains.)

Does multidimensional physics allow for chronokinesis? (Wells and Anderson excel.)

Wells appeals to the Fourth Dimension in:

The Time Machine (where he also refers to "all possible dimensions") (here)
Men Like Gods (here)
"The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes" (here)
"The Plattner Story" (here)

Readers of Poul Anderson's works and/or of this blog know how much Anderson achieved with multidimensionality.