Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Senses
After reading the essay and listening to the podcast I think that sight is the least trust worthy of the five senses. In the podcast “colors” they state that “color has an objective reality but the colors we see are tricks of the imagination and there is no perfectly objected view of color.”they are saying that color is a real thing but we all view it differently. It is a scientific fact that humans see colors differently than the other living organisms around us. This is because we have a different number photoreceptor cones in our eyes. Mantis shrimp have sixteen while Humans only have three. This allows the shrimp to see more colors that we can not. Even men and women can see colors differently because women have two X chromosomes while men only have one. These X chromosomes contain the genes in our eyes that help us see color so women have the potential to see more colors because of their extra chromosome. Another reason why sight is untrustworthy is because there are some things we can't see without the help of something else. Isaac Newton and the rainbow he created is an example of this. Without the prism Newton would never have know what the light was able to produce all along. He proved that the there is something in normal everyday sunlight that is impossible for us too see without another object helping us. After reading “how we listen” I would believe that sound would be the most reliable of the senses. I think this because music has a way of further developing or giving meaning to things. While talking about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Aaron Copland states that “the extraordinary strength and vigor of the theme results in the listeners receiving an impression that a forceful statement has been made.” He's saying that there is an understanding among individuals that there is a feeling that comes with the song that the listener can connect with.
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I agree with you that sight is the most untrustworthy of the five of our senses, because we can only see a small extent of the colors that something such as a mantis shrimp can see. Our sight can differ from person to person, what one person sees could be completely different than what I see. In the Radio Lab Podcast they say that “ten percent of males are colorblind,” and to think that some of these men could possibly not know that they are colorblind. Unlike sight, hearing is more of a concrete sense in my opinion. With hearing unless someone is deaf, they will normally hear the same exact things that everyone else hears. The only stipulation with hearing is how one person interprets the sounds as seems Copland the author of “ How We Listen” says it perfectly “the more beautiful a theme seems to you the harder it is to find any word that will describe it.” This demonstrates that we do hear the same thing but everyone interprets how they feel towards the sounds being heard.
ReplyDeleteI do not agree with Heather or John on this because I think that your hearing is the least trustworthy sense we have. I think hearing is the least trustworthy of the five senses because words and sounds could sound the same as other words or sounds in the world. You could be hearing something and someone right next to you could be hearing something completely different. Your ears will deceive you. I think your sight is more reliable because unless you are colorblind, I believe most all people see almost the same way, maybe not exactly the same way, but pretty close. The only deceivement I could believe your eyes could play on you is when looking at shadows on the ground. Two objects could make another completely different object on a surface giving you the allusion of something when it is not at al what you thought it was.
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