Wearing my fancy orange-filter sunglasses, I noticed the Forsythia bushes looked pure bright white. That’s funny. The picture above, being the product of cell phone color balance algorithms, does not really convey how pure white the flowers looked in my eye.
As an analogy to how our senses work, consider the related fact that babies are born ready to learn a language, but not ready to learn any particular language. Your parents can be 30th generation Japanese, and travel to France where you are born, and you will learn French and speak it like a native. Our senses share this blueprint.
Our ears are designed to hear, but we will mostly learn to hear only what we grow up surrounded by, and what we are taught to listen for.
In this Nature is supremely economical.
I remember reading an interview of an American anthropologist talking to some poor bloke in the Pacific Islands. The American was showing the islander some rainbows printed on paper, and asking him to point to and name the different colors. The American pointed to red, the islander said a word for that color. The American pointed to orange, the islander said the same word. There ensued an awkward interrogation: can this poor bloke actually not see the difference? The American was clearly having difficulty with the fact that these people had one word for “red-orange” Aside from the humor I imagined in this scene, with the islander snickering inside at the whacky things these Americans care about, it raises that question of what a person or group of people are actually experiencing inside.
Many of us find ourselves in this same scenario when choosing paint colors for our houses, with scenes like. “…no! that’s the Periwinkle and that’s the Lavender.” It’s not that I cannot see the differences, but there is some exasperation with all the naming and the pointing.
Back to driving and sunglasses, what about the sunset? It looks SUPER YELLOW to me. The yellow Forsythia becomes white, the yellow sunset becomes more yellow. Continue driving to look for other examples.
If I grow up with several species of insects who all have similar shades of yellow, but some of the insects have poisonous stings while others are harmless, I will learn to actually SEE and name the difference between those shades of yellow. While another child would SEE no difference. What I SEE is developed by a statistical experience weighted by importance. I do not know of any limit to how sensitive our senses can become.
As an analogy to how our statistical experience determines the colors we SEE, look at the shaded circles below.
Growing up, we all experience that the source of light usually comes from above. So the visual system learns that, and interprets the visual stimulus accordingly. The left-side circles appear as bulging out of the wall, the right-side circles appear as concave. That would be true if the light source were above me. If you grew up on a planet where the primary light source was fluorescence from the rocks & dirt below, you would perceive the wall of circles exactly the opposite way. This is analogous to the baby being able to learn any language, but needing to be exposed to one particular language. Our visual system is designed to tell us whether something is concave or convex, but we must first learn where the light source usually comes from on the particular planet we find ourselves on.
This sort of thinking helps with some color optical illusions, like the one below where squares 1 and 2 are the exact same color & brightness. This seems impossible.
Nature presents us with many different color combinations, but not all possible combinations. Since block #2 is resting in shadow, it would need to have a brighter color in order to present the color hitting my eye, hence the visual system will adjust, and show square #2 brighter than #1, though they are exactly the same hue, saturation, and brightness. In nature, all colors are always present to us in context of other colors. So there is no natural answer to the question of what a color is in isolated objectivity. Our science training makes us believe that color = frequency, and therefore a single frequency of light must have an actual, objective, color all by itself. The trouble with that is that color does not equal frequency. Frequency equals frequency, while color is so many more things.
All our sense perceptions are like this - they are trained by experience, by statistics, by relation and meaning. The eye is built to perceive colors. And there are a thousand details to how you perceive color that were entirely established by your statistical interactions with the particular world you grew up in. If you grew up in different surroundings than me, then you will actually perceive EVERYTHING differently than me. And yet each of us believes we are right, and anyone who perceives differently must be wrong.
Back to the sunglasses, I found some white-flowered trees. I have to admit that by this time my color perception was becoming quite confused, and I could no longer decide myself what color the white flowers took on with the glasses.
But I do stop to enjoy the trees. Gorgeous trees. I estimated there are about 800,000 petals on the tree - yeah, Nature just does that - a single tree makes 800,000 versions of the same flower design. Each flower a unique instance of that ideal flower for this tree, which can never be manifest except through 800,000 material versions. I have heard that the full structure for the flower is already established inside the bud before winter sets in, and during Spring the structure is simply filled up with fluids, causing the flowers to burst forth. I doubt it is that simple. Does each bud have its own individual responsibility to manufacture and present its particular flower in all its perfection & beauty?
In a week or two the petals will all fall, and collect in piles on the ground. But then in a few more days the petals will be gone. I have found this mysterious. The petals seem to evaporate. I look around and can find no sign of them. Perhaps there is a different decay route for something so fragrant and subtle.
Reading via a dark orange screen (its bedtime here), the first thought is neurosurgeon Jack Kruse, who found the pineal gland needed appropriate morning, day and evening light, eg. staring at a monitors blue light at midnight tells the brain it's midday so dumps certain hormones making ready the body to chase rabbits for lunch. Conversely, wearing sunglasses (any sunglasses) during the day tells the eye/pineal it's overcast or dusk, fires should be lit, time to slow down, no apt hormones with them either. After a while this wreaks havoc hormonally. What doesn't these days, take a number I guess.
Anyway, even through this (f.lux) monitor I can discern blue sky and white petals through the orange, and its doubly deep orange twin. Almost like static firelight.
Thanks. Since I listen to at least 50% of stuff I ingest, I figure I owe it to others to extend the same.