Timeline for Does the word "spectrum" (as in a progressing array of values) necessarily imply separate extremes?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 15, 2021 at 14:54 | comment | added | rajah9 | Finally, consider The Dress brouhaha (livescience.com/50842-dress-debate-color-perception.html). While some perceived the dress as white and others as blue, the dress color had a defined set of wavelengths, regardless of human perception. Those wavelengths were at a particular set of values in the electromagnetic spectrum known as visible light. It would be absurd to think that the dress shifted from blue to white, depending on the observer. Again, Human perception is labile and subjective; the spectrum is objective. | |
| Feb 15, 2021 at 14:45 | comment | added | rajah9 | Also consider the Purkinje effect in which red vs. blue are perceived differently at full sunlight vs. dusk. The wavelengths of red vs. blue are constant, but the human perception of luminescence changes at dusk. Human perception is labile and subjective; the spectrum is objective. | |
| Feb 15, 2021 at 14:41 | comment | added | rajah9 | I agree that "Human psychology is a part of reality." But the word spectrum is a scientific classification and does not refer to this psychological "reality." Red and violet are separate extremes on the spectrum. Although they appear adjacent on some color wheels, their adjacency is as illusory as Müller-Lyer (optical) illusion. | |
| Feb 14, 2021 at 17:21 | comment | added | jsw29 | While it is true that 'there is no loop' in the physical phenomena that trigger our perceptions of colour, the experiences of colour do form a loop, which is represented by the colour wheel. It is thus misleading to say that, 'while red and violet can be adjacent in some of these color wheels, there is no loop in real life'. In real life, real people really experience red and violet as close to each other, even though the frequencies of the electromagnetic waves that cause these experiences are not close. Human psychology is a part of reality. | |
| Feb 14, 2021 at 4:29 | history | answered | rajah9 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |