If, or when we come to discover that “knowing” for us is no more than our perceptions of what we believe it means to know a thing, and like all perception(s) is/are sensibility dependent, we find foundations shaken. And this can be both revelatory (though disturbing) and healthy.
I can think of nothing other as some salient example that might serve than what is called the pigment theory of color vs the light theory of color. They are quite in opposition, though serving the whom of who is using according to their need of understanding and/or expression.
The artist, of the pigment theory comes to recognize black (as it is perceived) as the “presence” of all color(s). White is contrarily or conversely considered the absence of all color.
But to the scientist/physicist who deals in wavelengths susceptible to measurements, it is the opposite. In the light theory of color, black is the absence of all color(s), while white light is its/their presence in totality. When “white” light passes through a prism it yields on exiting all the colors contained within itself. They are made plain by separating of all the wavelengths of what we call color through the work of the prism to cause “white light” to traverse varied distances in its travel through the prism. All these frequencies of light that we call color, contained all within “white light”, are revealed. In total darkness (or what we would call “blackness”) obviously there is no light to be separated or discerned thus. So for the scientist, and according to his understanding of light, frequencies, and wavelengths, he holds a very different understanding of color than, let’s say, the artist. But as to their use, both the scientist and the artist are served equally in their understandings.
To get frivolous, but for the purposes of how we express ourselves according to understandings and perceptions, there could be two renderings/paintings hung side by side in a gallery, one done by an artist, one by a physicist. One all black, one all white…both entitled “A Colorful Day By the Seaside”.
And we would be less in some awareness were we to discount this interplay of perceptions and understanding and how each affects the other as intertwined…particularly to our understanding of even ourselves and thence our own expression to the “world”. To each…”other”. Yes, we favor our own view. We are intertwined to it. Bound in it, to it, and by it. We serve ourselves…according to our perceptions and understandings.
To go even farther into such frivolity, no doubt there are scientists who dabble in painting, and artists who dabble in science and are most likely untroubled in their pursuits. Depending upon which stage they ascend to address (express) themselves to the world, i.e., to “others”; they will adopt or put on their appropriate hats.
And, if I may get very personal in anecdote about perceptions and understandings, I venture to share this. To me the leaf is green. To me that is the irreducible substance of it in perception. It…is green. But the scientists tells me it appears green to me because it absorbs every color/wavelength of light except green which it reflects now to me, and my eye, and mind. My understanding of substance is set askew. My mind wants to think in terms of “no, it is substantially green…’giving off’ green and its substance of the greenness of itself to me” It is not that the scientist would refute this, he would say “Yes, that is why you perceive it as green, that is how color and wavelengths of light work to us…it reflects green because its substance is such as to absorb every other color/wavelength of light and reflect the green wavelength.”
But now my mind rebels, or is at least provoked to questions about true substance. The leaf now becomes very different to me in my understanding regarding what I previously believed its substance…it is not “pulsing out” green as from the substance of itself, or “making green” for me to see. Both it and I are entirely subject to the light falling upon it. So now, if I were to seek to understand and express that leaf as to a truer notion of understanding of its own substance…I am somewhat forced to say “Leaf (at least to me in substance) is absorb-er of red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, and violet.” Its substance as absorber…is that…for all except green.
It doesn’t “give off green” (though it actually is doing that…giving it off, not receiving/absorbing it into itself) as producer of it. In this, again, an entire notion of passivity as only a thing in all subjection overcomes me, upsets me, even disturbs me (this thing I call myself as active man, a doer of things):
Both it and I are entirely subject to the light falling upon it.
Entirely subject.
Something wants to rebel at this.
Something tends to want to make its own light. And claim it as its own.
The light has made this plain.
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