From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Fri Jul 08 2005 - 19:52:03 BST
Ian,
(Note: I sent a slightly different version of this post a few days ago, but
due to switching ISP's it appears to have been lost. So here it is again, I
hope)
Ian said:
Despite claiming to be a fan of Barfield (on the strength of Poetic
Diction and History in English Words) I hadn't read Saving the
Appearances until I saw all his "particles" floating past in a couple
of recent threads.
I couldn't comment so I just had to read it. In fact I've had the book
for ages, and now recall why I stopped reading it. His physics is
completely wrong.
Scott:
From what follows it appears that you are mistaking what he is saying, but
I'm not sure what you are saying, so...
Ian said:
He's right that "trees" are more "tangible" than "rainbows" (they do
more than interact with light for a start). Metaphorically both are
made of "particles', but quite a different mix of particles on quite
different physical levels. He's right that we only see light, and we
only hear sound, everything else is "mental" (alpha or beta thinking).
Scott:
Actually, he points out that we mainly see trees and hear thrushes, not
light and sound, though in special cases we could say we only see light
(example: lightening), or hear sound (something completely new to our
experience). He does NOT say that everything else, e.g., photons, are
"mental", though of course it requires thinking and experimenting to infer
the reality and characteristics of photons.
Ian said:
But his Netwonian, classical, physics is completely up the creek.
Scott:
This is a bizarre claim. Isn't he criticizing Newtonian physics for assuming
that the contents of sense experience have an existence completely
independent of the observer? Isn't this assumption responsible for the idea
of Newtonian absolute space and time? I guess I am unclear of what Newtonian
premises you accuse him of maintaining.
Ian said:
There is nothing about a rainbow that depends on human (or any
animalian) eyes seeing, in order for it to exist, individual or
shared, any more than a tree.
Scott:
He does not deny the existence of the raindrops, or the light waves (or
photons) that come about when the sun shines on the drops. All he is saying
is that the sense experience of seeing a rainbow only happens when an eye is
focused in the right direction, and that that experience is that of a
rainbow, not of light waves. Same with a tree, though one can also touch a
tree. Without the focused eye there is no thing of the size, shape, and
color that we call a rainbow. So this has nothing to do with good or bad
physics. In fact, it has nothing to do with a particular sort of physics at
all. It is about
distinguishing between what we can talk about supposing the absence of an
observer and what we call objects of sense perception, like rainbows and
trees.
Ian said:
The refracted light from rainbows is
more "diffuse" and "non-localised" than the reflected light from a
tree, but the light rays (photon streams whatever) are as real in both
cases, whether eyes exist to see them or not.
Scott:
As I said, he does not deny the reality of the light rays. He is only saying
that we don't experience them as such with our senses.
Ian said:
(All the stuff about
where in space and relative to distant hills and hands in your field
of view is garbage - poetic, but garbage none-the-less.) I can make a
rainbow between me and this computer screen (or behind it) by blowing
a raspberry in the right place. And so can you.
Scott:
How is that relevant? He wouldn't deny that you can create the conditions in
which a rainbow can be experienced. But the rainbow as a colorful sensation
requires a nervous system, though the light rays do not.
Ian said:
His stuff about hearing due to having ears, rather than sensing sound
waves, is suspiciously close to the same evolutionary fallacy that no
being could see (sense light) until the eyeball had come to exist.
Just plain wrong creationist meme.
Scott:
But we don't "sense sound waves". We hear tones. When the violinist plays an
A above middle C do you experience 440 events each second? If you sensed
sound waves, that is what you would experience. But you don't. The 440
events per second are real, but not directly sensed.
Ian said:
Should I read on past Chapter 4 (Participation) or does it all depend
on his erroneous start ? SO So sad. Poor Mr Barfield, such a promising
poetic start too.
Scott:
In summary, I am quite perplexed as to what you see his erroneous start to
be.
- Scott
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