The funny thing is that it apparently instigated some sort of neuroscientific investigation into the nature of seeing, when all it was was a badly washed-out photo.
It's actually quite an interesting topic. Other than people who are colour blind, how do we know that the colours we see are the same for everyone? There will be the obvious differences in naming colours eg. Americans are prone to calling some shades of deep blue, purple (acknowledging that purple is a mix of blue and red). Unless there's a blue/purple colour blindness, of course.
I've said this for years. Maybe we all actually have the same favourite colour but because we see them different it's got a different name...
We actually know that we don't all see colour the same way. We don't all have the same density of rods and cones and even same frequency of each kind. Women are more sensitive to blue light than men for example. Some women (very rare) are tetrachromatic, instead of detecting three wavelengths (red, green, blue) they detect four wavelengths. A solid coloured wall to us could have thousands of shades in a pattern to them. One thing I find fascinating is what other animals see. Like to deer for example, they are extremely sensitive to blue. If you wear regular blue jeans, to a deer it looks like as bright as a florescent safety vest looks to us. And most mammals can't tell the difference between green and red. A tiger stands out in the jungle to us, but that bright orange just blends in with the greenery to most of their prey.
Saw a very interesting Attenborough bit about fish that see in uv and such. It is one of those fascinating evolutionary things. How some creature at some point found that detecting warmth or light was a good thing is imponderable
Yes, although of course they didn't so much find that out as much as they randomly had the mutation and it was beneficial. I remember reading a report a decade or more ago about some kid in China with incredible night time vision, totally off the charts for what normal humans can see. No reproductive advantage these days, but I wonder if we were still in the hunter/gatherer stage if that would have been a bigger advantage being able to hunt nocturnal animals better.
He'd have an advantage as a night fighter over London in wwii but these days it's fairly pointless. Night vision is not really a later day human requirement. Maybe in the very dim past the precursors to primates might have been nocturnal or lived under grludn hiding from dinosaurs. Who knows. But some sort of multi celled blob somehow evolved an eye or some sort. It is utterly bizarre yet it happened.
Yeah, the whole of evolution is pretty amazing how we went from blobs of amino acid and evolved into creatures that can see, dye hair pink, listen to nickleback and watch the Kardashians. It wasn't all progress along the way. I know the eye is one of those things that Intelligent Design theorists use frequently in their arguments against evolution... But we do have examples of eyes from planaria who only can detect vaguely light/dark all the way up to the incredible eyes of birds... So we do have examples of all sorts of complexity... But yeah. Vision is an amazing thing to have evolved.
It's amazing how stupid the religious have become. In the olden days prior to the dark ages the theory of evolution wouid simply have been absorbed into the storyline. Same for the earth is round. At some point the papal states stopped absorbing and starting suppressing. The amazing yank flat earther and evolution deniers (and climate change deniers btw) types are loons. But then you have people who literally decided to stop 300 years ago and drive about in horse and carts over there.
Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics was a monk. (Although he did get into some trouble with the church over some things he said... I think there's some bible verse that said something about sheep being born black or white based on where in a field they're born... Or something like that. Mendel said that couldn't be true unless there was direct divine intervention and got his hand slapped for saying that)
This is the bible verse that got Mendel in trouble with the church: He directly referenced this verse and said that that isn't how inheritance works unless God directly intervened in the offspring. He was told off for critiquing the scripture. If they had kicked him out the church over that it could have been many years later before we knew about genetics. (Although I suppose it kind of was since it wasn't until much later his work became well known)
I think lots of people still misunderstand the theory of natural selection and adhere to the teleological explanation (purpose rather than cause). The eye is fascinating, but here's Richard Dawkins' explanation of its evolution. It's about 14 minutes long, so not for the ADHD types.
Suppression. I suppose however just plain stealing Christmas by subsuming the timing of the winter solstice with the assigned timing of Christ's birth was more pragmatic way to gain acceptance. Once they had full control over roman empire then it was like all powers a matter of keeping control by making the written word unchangeable. It's amazing to me that people in the land of the supposed free wish to make things like stories about black and white sheep literally gospel. Any sensible mature person would simply subsume the wonder of creation into their message as nobody can really understand the magnitude of the universe or really why a sheep is black wool or white wool. I suppose that would be grand design thinking. There's zero point denying what's proven fact so just absorb it into your own message to strengthen yourself.
Speaking of colours and evolution though... What I find fascinating is that not one mammal has evolved to have a green pigment. (Actually no animal has green pigments... Green insects/reptiles and fish achieve green through tricks refracting light). But green should be the ultimate disguise. Sloths can be green, but that's only because they have algae growing on them. Billions of years of evolution and not one animal has evolved to produce green pigment, the ultimate disguise.
I went to a Catholic school, we were taught science and RE as separate subjects and there was no attempt to refute observable reality because it didn't fit traditional dogma. Surely these batshit crazy bible literalists are just an aggressive clique of American Evangelists with a few dim-witted acolytes scattered around the globe? There was also a strong ecumenical movement in those days to bring the different denominations* to a common understanding, whereas the aforementioned Evangelists seem wholly divisive. *I actually typed demoninations there - obvious the devil was trying to take control of me.
Pure speculation, but perhaps the fact that animals don't but plants do is somehow significant - something intrinsic to their biology? Just as animals need oxygen and and excrete CO2 and plants are the opposite. Tenuous, but I can't think of why else it would be. Plants don't like green, which is why they reflect it.
Both my O Level and then A Level Biology teachers rejected evolution and my A level teacher refused to teach it unlike the O level teacher .
