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Bibliography | Author's Preface |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | ||||
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18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | Conclusion | Index |
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(Most quotes verbatim Henri Louis Bergson, some paraphrased.) |
(Relevant to Pirsig, William James Sidis, and Quantonics Thinking Modes.) |
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"Shall we call the intensity
of light a quantity, or shall
we treat it as a quality?
It has not perhaps
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(Our bold, color, violet bold italic problematics and violet bold problematics.) Bergson restarts his footnote counts on each page. So to refer a footnote, one must state page number and footnote number. Our bold and color highlights follow a code:
We feel obliged to answer Bergson's first sentence question,
and just do it outright. Light is qualitative, just as we earlier
exclaimed in our page
45 comments that sound is qualitative. Light is a quality!
Sound is a quality! All quantum actual manifestations of reality
are qualities. Why? How? Reality is quantum flux and quantum
fluxings' We didn't know, when we did this review in early 2001, how to burrow deeply into quantum issues of lightings, and Doug isn't sure how much value it adds here nearly a decade later. Just in case you are interested, see Doug's more recent CeodE 2008-2009 efforts on quantum~scintillation. Doug - 4Jun2009. |
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51 |
"Still more important are the changes of hue which coloured surfaces, and even the pure colours of the spectrum, undergo under the influence of a brighter or dimmer light. As the luminous source is brought nearer, violet takes a bluish tinge, green tends to become a whitish yellow, and red a brilliant yellow. Inversely, when the light is moved away, ultramarine passes into violet and yellow into green; finally, red, green and violet tend to become a whitish yellow. Physicists have remarked these changes of hue for some time; (1) but what is still more remarkable is that the majority of men do not perceive them, unless they pay attention to them or are warned of them. Having made up our mind, [classically] once for all, to interpret changes of quality as changes of quantity, we begin by asserting that every object has its own peculiar colour, definite and invariable. And when the hue of objects tends to become yellow or blue, instead of saying that we see their colour change under the influence of an increase or diminution of light, we assert that the colour remains the same but that our sensation of luminous intensity increases or diminishes. We thus substitute once more, for the qualitative impression received by our consciousness, the quantitative interpretation given by our [SOMwitted CTM] understanding." Note (1): Rood, Modern Chromatics, (1879), pp. 181-187. |
(Our brackets, bold , color, links, and violet bold italic problematics.)
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52 |
"Helmholtz has described a case of interpretation of the same kind, but still more complicated: "If we form white with two colours of the spectrum, and if we increase or diminish the intensities of the two coloured lights in the same ratio, so that the proportions of the combination remain the same, the resultant colour remains the same although the relative intensity of the sensations undergoes a marked change. . . . This depends on the fact that the light of the sun, which we consider as the normal white light during the day, itself undergoes similar modifications of shade when the luminous intensity varies." (1) "But yet, if we often judge of variations m the luminous source by the relative changes of hue of
Note (1): Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik, 1st ed. (1867), pp. 318-319. Note (2): Eléments de psychophysique, Paris, 1883. Note (3): See the account given of these experiments in the Revue philosophique, 1887, Vol. i, p. 71, and Vol. ii, p. 180. |
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53 |
"Of these experiments we shall not dispute the result, nor shall we deny the value of photometric processes; but we must see how we have to interpret them. "Look closely at a sheet of paper lighted e.g. by four candles, and put out in succession one, two,
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54 | "But, in point of fact, black has just as much reality for our consciousness as white, and the decreasing intensities of white light illuminating a given surface would appear to an unprejudiced consciousness as so many different shades, not unlike the various colours of the spectrum. This is the reason why the change in the sensation is not continuous, as it is in the external cause, and why the light can increase or decrease for a certain period without producing any apparent change in the illumination of our white surface: the illumination will not appear to change until the increase or decrease of the external light is sufficient to produce a new quality. The variations in brightness of a given colourthe affective sensations of which we have spoken above being left asidewould thus be nothing but qualitative changes, were it not our custom to transfer the cause to the effect and to replace our immediate impressions by what we learn from experience and science. The same thing might be said of degrees of saturation. Indeed, if the different intensities of a colour correspond to so many different shades existing between this colour and black, the degrees of saturation are like shades intermediate between this same colour and pure white. Every colour, we might say, can be regarded under two aspects, from the point of view of black and from the point of view of white. And black is then to intensity what white is to saturation." |
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In other words, classical science forces its adherents to misinterpret quantum, qualitative reality! Bravo! Bravo Bergson! |
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55 |
"The meaning of the photometric experiments will now be understood. A candle placed at a
"But the object of the psychophysicist is entirely different: it is the sensation of light itself which he studies, and claims to measure." |
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This is a crucial observation. This observation rests at physics very heart and soul, and it is physics' own source of its own imminent failure! Quantum reality, due its process' absolute flux, denies any classical idea or concept of identity! Poincaré understood this, too. |
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56 | "Sometimes he will proceed
to integrate infinitely small differences,
after the method of
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(Our bold, color, violet bold italic problematics, and violet bold problematics.)
Of course, Bergson is correct, n¤ two macro actualities can ever be classically 'identical' to one another. Indeed, as we show elsewhere in Quantonics, n¤ two Planck quantons are, in general, 'identical.' See our One is the Onliest Number... |
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57 |
"As soon as it is proved that two sensations can be equal without being identical, psychophysics will be established. But it is this equality which seems to me open to question: it is easy to explain, in fact, how a sensation of luminous intensity can be said to be at an equal distance from two others. "Let us assume for a moment that from our birth onwards the growing intensity of a luminous source
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"But this will always be merely a convenient interpretation: for although the number of intermediate shades may be equal on both sides, although we may pass from one to the other by sudden leaps, we do not know whether these leaps are magnitudes, still less whether they are equal magnitudes: above all it would be necessary to show that the intermediates which have helped us throughout our measurement could be found again inside the object which we have measured. If not, it is only by a metaphor that a sensation can be said to be an equal distance from two others. "Now, if the views which we have before enumerated with regard to luminous intensities are
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59 |
"The contrast A B will thus be declared equal to the contrast B C when our imagination, aided by our memory, inserts between A and B the same number of intermediate shades [mean gradations method] as between B and C. It is needless to say that this will necessarily be a very rough estimate. .We may anticipate that it will vary considerably with different persons. Above all it is to be expected that the person will show more hesitation and that the estimates of different persons will differ more widely in proportion as the difference in brightness between the rings A and B is increased, for a more and more laborious effort will be required to estimate the number of intermediate hues. This is exactly what happens, as we shall easily perceive by glancing at the two tables drawn up by Delbuf. (1) In proportion as he increases the difference in brightness between the exterior ring and the middle ring, the difference between the numbers oil which one and the same observer or different observers successively fix increases almost continuously from 3 degrees to 94, from 5 to 73, from 10 to 25, from 7 to 40. But let us leave these divergences on one side: let us assume that the observers are always consistent and always agree with one another; will it then be established that the contrasts A B and B C are equal?" Note (1): Eléments de psychophysique, pp. 61, 69. |
(Our brackets, bold and color.)
Note, reader, this is 'science's' goal! See Kuhn. Science wants all its practitioners, ideally, to be clones of one another! It is called a "paradigm." Now, consider: Culture... Law... Religion... Sexuality... Truth... |
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60 | "It would first be necessary to prove that two successive elementary contrasts are equal quantities, whilst, in fact, we only know that they are successive. It would then be necessary to prove that inside a given tint of grey we perceive the less intense shades which our imagination has run through in order to estimate the objective intensity of the source of light. In a word, Delbuf's psychophysics assumes a theoretical postulate of the greatest importance, which is disguised under the cloak of an experimental result, and which we should formulate as follows: "When the objective quantity of light is continuously increased, the differences between the hues of grey successively obtained, each of which represents the smallest perceptible increase of physical stimulation, are quantities equal to one another. And besides, any one of the sensations obtained can be equated with the sum of the differences which separate from one another all previous sensations, going from zero upwards." Now, this is just the postulate of Fechner's psychophysics, which we are going to examine." |
(Our bold and color.) To accomplish this in light/color theory would be analogous mathematics' Peano induction which assumes 1=1.
Quantum science shows us that Planck quanta are probabilistically unequal to one another, in general. I.e., in general, n¤ two Planck quanta ever have identical phases, n¤r loci, n¤r momenta, and so on... So, we can now show, anticipating Bergson's results, that Fechner flubbed it. |