It Is Not the Eye That Sees
We provide this technical information about various forms of radiation simply to explain that they don't give rise to the effect known as "light." These radioactive particles strike, bounce, and give rise to physical and chemical effects that sometimes cause damage. Yet the effects they cause can never be referred to as light.
The only reason we describe some of these particles as "light rays" is that they're perceived by our eyes. Photons falling on our eyes' retinal layer are turned into electrical impulses by the receptor cells there. The optical nerves carry this electrical current to the visual center at the rear of the brain. This center interprets the current and gives rise to images..
When we investigate this system, we arrive at a most interesting conclusion: In fact, our eyes have no ability to "see" at all. The eye is merely an intermediate organ that converts photons into electrical signals. It has no ability to understand and interpret. It is not the eye which regards at the bright world all around us. No sensations of light or color are formed in the eye.
In order to better understand this concept, let's consider the technical definition of sight in slightly more detail.
In fact, our eyes have no property of "sight." The eye is merely an intermediary unit whose retina transforms the photons reaching it into electrical signals
We give the name of a color to photons at various frequencies of vibration. Depending on those photons' intensity of vibration, we refer to the visible effects they produce as red, blue or yellow. When all frequencies are combined together, the result is white. Snow appears white, because it reflects all the frequencies in sunlight, the combination of which produces white. Leaves are green, because they only reflect only those photons at a frequency that gives the sensation of green, while absorbing all the others. Glass is transparent, just like the air, because photons pass through them both and reach us encountering hardly any obstacles-such as clouds or flyspecks. A piece of black cloth reflects no color because it absorbs practically all the photons that strike it. In other words, no photons reach our eyes from it, and we perceive it as only a dark or black shape. A mirror copies an image because its smooth reflective surface absorbs almost none of the photons striking it, but bounces them back. They follow a parallel course to one another, undergoing almost no deformation.
In short, the concepts of "light," "white," "green" or "transparent" refer to perceptions in the brain, and are purely relative descriptions. The truth is that in the outside world there is no light or color. There are only forms of radiation which we perceive in that form. The interpretation belongs solely to us. Even if the arriving photons are turned into electrical signals and the visual center in the eye possesses the same properties, an error or structural difference which might occur in the eye will lead to the same object being perceived in very different ways. That is why color-blind people perceive and interpret certain colors differently from normal people.
In short, the photon movements which we interpret as light or color are nothing more than physical phenomena that transpire in the pitch blackness of the brain. Our bodies-including our eyes, and the whole material world that we perceive as a bright, three-dimensional vision that some people claim represents an absolute reality-all exist within that same darkness.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
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