Free Used A Prism To Find Out Where Color Is. Essay Sample
Listen to Radiolab's program on color. Create a list of all the new information that you gain from the program.
Question: Whether we see color inside our heads or outside.
Is the light is within or without?
The prism shatters white light, thus, creating a rainbow
A second prism showed that color could be isolated. For example, by “filtering” the blue light, it stayed blue.
White light constituted of the colors. That is, the colors are in the light itself.
The colors are energy inside the white light.
Humans see seven colors. The normal rainbow red orange yellow green blue violent (purple)
Dogs see blue, green, white and black
A sparrow sees ultraviolet light and can therefore see more colors than humans
Butterflies have five to six receptors and therefore se more colors as well.
The mantis shrimp has many more (about twelve receptors) and can see many more colors.
The existence of cones in the eye to see color.
People with normal color vision have three cones – they are tri-chomats
Everything is made for tri-chromats
They are called tetra-chromats – four cones –
Women have the fourth cone – extra dimension of color.
Some use the extra cone, others don’t – maybe through stimulation
Seeing more red is dominating.
Where do colors come from – came from the earth
Gamboge (from Cambodia) – yellow from a tree – cut a slash in the tree – goop into bamboo tubes – leave it a couple of years to collect (very slow collection)
George Kremer sells Gamboge
Dull color – dusky – drop of water – grind it – get bright fluorescent color
Dangerous color – hammer the goop (resin) – bullets
Violence in the color because of the presence of the bullets.
What would have happened in the groves – the violence
Kremer defends the morality of it. Says it was too remote for a connection. Customer demands color – painters are peaceful
Related to transcendence – beautiful and special – yellow – a perfect yellow.
The question of Blue – The Color of the Sky
William Gladstone – into Homer to research color
Homer speaks about color differently – Strange uses of color
Wine dark sea
Oxen
Violet – dark violet – iron also violet
Honey – Faces pale with fear green
Forest and leaves – not green
Predomination of black and white (100 %)
Blood red
Yellow
BLUE – 0 times used in Homer – no blue
Black 170 times
White – 10 times
Red – 13 times
Yellow under ten times
Green under tem
Concluded Homer was color blind – all Greeks were color blind
Continued throughout generation (inherited) – color seeing gets better every generation.
After the Homer debacle
Geiger – Philologist – same weird stuff – all over the place not just ancient Greek text, but all over ancient world
All over no Blue
Ancients that the sky is blue
Color term acquirement -Black -white -red -yellow -blue
Blue discovered last – blue are rare in the world
No blue nature – no blue eyes
No need to name color unless it can be made
Red could be created easier
No-one had blue for thousands years of blue
Himba tribe – no separate term for blue – stared at the screen – no difference in how they see colors
Put colors in a group and give it a word – category jumps out – louder to eyes – notice more – unlocks blue if you see the word – without word still see it – just noticing it, not seeing it.
You just don’t notice it if you are not have word
Blue did not matter
SKY – why not the first color – blueness of sky – why not the first color
Never mention sky was blue to daughter even if she knew the color blue.
Guy’s daughter – said sky was white – pointed into nothingness
Says eventually it is blue – perfect blue is not actually blue
Annie Dillard opens the discussion for a way to see. In the process, there are a number of lessons we are able to learn from this. In the first instance, many of us see without the effort, especially when we are unrestricted, for example, when we are children. Somehow, we loose the ability to see without effort. As she says: “I used to be able to see flying insects in the air But I lost interest, I guess, for I dropped the habit.” This is even though there is the matter of “now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair” to contend with. By keeping to effortless “seeing” we are bound to see the world in a way that is not “naturally obvious.”
Dillard’s lessons in seeing apply also to the way in which we observe color, and light. Even so, darkness creates a different way of seeing, in that it changes everything into shadows. Van Gogh stated: “a great deal of light falls on everything.” Light plays a huge role in what we see a d the way we see it. As she continues to quote form Stewart Edward White, as he speaks of seeing deer: “As soon as you can forget the naturally obvious and construct an artificial obvious, then you too will see deer.” It is especially the difference between the “naturally obvious” and the construct “artificial obvious.”
Dillard also speaks of the greatest of assets; that of “foreshortenings and depths.” These are the aspects that make the eye adjust to the small and the large, to the distant and the near. We often see the very broad sphere with the naked eye, as she puts it: “With the naked eye I can see two million light years to the Andromeda galaxy.” However, we often see the larger picture, but are often stumped by the minute, and the close by, therefore thinking that we are not seeing anything at all. We end up echoing Dillard’s words: “I’m blind as a bat.”
What does the work with the blind teach us about how we perceive space?ANNIE DILLARD READINGFile
Dillard comments are from the book Space and Sight by Marius von Senden in pointing out how we perceive space. It reflects on medical procedures that were performed on cataract-blinded patients. The results of these procedures allowed patients to be able to see, but they often lacked the ability to have the knowledge of what space is. This is in terms of how a seeing person perceives space. Space has size, form, and distance (depth). Once the patients were able to see, they could not understand depth. This also meant that they could not determine height and distance.
Thus, what this means is that, the normal seeing person would understand the space around him or her in terms of these characteristics (as mentioned). We perceive space in front of us, as well as behind us. As the following example illustrates, that one of the patients “gradually comes to realize that there is also a space behind him, which he does not see.” We know that when we walk into a room, the space surrounds us; that is, behind in front as well as above us.
As seeing people, we are used to the expanse of our space, but very often, the blind person, who obtains vision afterward, cannot perceive of the vastness of the world around them. There are those who find their newly acquired vision a wonderful adventure, and can teach us how to see by picking up on all the detail in, for example a grapes: “a boy calls out, ‘It is dark, blue and shiny It isn’t smooth, it has bumps and hollows.’” They are often surprised and astonished at the beauty of everything, teaching us to look more carefully at what we are seeing (looking at). By understanding how they saw the world before, and how they saw the world after, should motivate us into seeing the world in that light of wonderment and new discovery each day.
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