At Sat, 17 Apr 1999 10:32:14 -0400 (EDT), you wrote:
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>> Because of the differential scatter rate possessed by photons at
>> the red end of our frequency spectrum vs. at the blue end, when
>> penetrating our atmosphere.
>> Joe E. Dees
>> Poet, Pagan, Philosopher
>
>..to reconfigure the childish question in adult terms:
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>why is it that our perceptive field interprets electromagnetic
>frequency variation of light from the sun on interaction with the
>terran atmosphere as an experience posessing the qualia 'blueness'
>and what does this signify?
>
Our visual spectrum circumscribes one octave of frequency, centered around green, with blue towards one end and red towards the other. Our auditory spectrum, OTOH, is comprised of many octaves of frequency. The reason that this state of affairs evolved is that hearing is a less precise, more coarse-grained locator, sering to direct our visual attention in the general direction from which the sound issues, at which time our more precise, finer-grained seeing informs us in more detail. Therefore audition monitors a wider band, allowing more varied sounds to come to our attention, while vision must be limited to a single octave to avoid harmonic interference with the precise perception of line, which would happen if we perceived multiple colors emanating from areas, some in common with those of contiguous environs and some different. The hearing of chords does not so confuse us, because we are not attempting to extract the same category of information from audition as we are !
from vision. Frequency is color to vision and pitch to audition, amplitude is brightness to vision and loudness to audition, waveform is texture to vision and timbre to audition. Also, although both receive signals through the spatiotemporal manifold, they grasp it in differing ways, with the spatial predominating in vision and the temporal predominant in audition (although both are present in both).
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Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher