The question as it was brought up was: "try to consider what a new color would look like"
This seemed simply enough as something that should be shunned immediately from to much thought for its obvious impossibility in completion. However, as I was considering this fact over the course of this last week, I actually stumbled on a color that I had never seen before, and felt that it was necessary to bring this topic back to the drawing board. As silly as this may sound at first, I saw what infra-red actually looks like in trying to prove whether or not something I had heard was real. The test proposed to me was that in looking through a camera you can see the infra-red light that is emitted through things like t.v. remote controls, as can be seen in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgsbjlXQMLw
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that I wanted to then pose this question:
Do you think that it is possible that we are as philosophers simply ignoring some of the things that are of relevance, even though it just seems as if we can't see them?
There are two scientific issues with this post that need to be addressed.
ReplyDelete1) Color refers to a portion of wavelengths within the electromagnetic radiation spectrum called the visible spectrum. This spectrum is strictly defined (390 to 750 nanometers) and discovering a new color within it is not going to happen.
2) That video may in some sense capture infrared radiation, but what you see is only a representation of it using light from the visible spectrum. It's a translation from infrared radiation to visible light. The naked human eye alone cannot see infrared--it is outside of the visible spectrum.
Perhaps you didn't really mean to say that you saw a new color as I defined it above. In that case I apologize for being so picky, but either way I think this new color idea needs to be dropped. It doesn't hold up when examined scientifically.
Yes, I see what you are saying, and I can certainly agree that it wasn't actually infra red that I had seen but rather a representation. However, that point that I was aiming for was more the goal of this post, because even the fact that it is an illusion is more what caught my attention. I suppose that the question I posed is a little bit of a rhetorical one, but even still I was simply inspired to try and consider further possibilities of these somewhat hidden pieces of knowledge (even if they are just illusions of knowledge).
ReplyDeleteI did gloss over the ultimate point of your post. I am kind of a nerd, and I tend to get hung up on scientific details. Hopefully I address your point in this second comment.
ReplyDeleteHumans overlook stuff all the time. We think that something is settled or unknowable and then drop it. Philosophers are sharp enough to resist this urge and to re-examine what we supposedly already know. Philosophers are still just humans though, and can have the same blind spots as everyone else. This justifies the need for a community of philosophers.