Tuesday, 16 October 2007

Wave-particle duality (don’t expect any answers here…)

I was thinking about the difference between light and sound, and Ingold’s argument about the senses, light, manifestations of light, and objects, on the one hand, and sound perception on the other. Please note that I live under a regime of scarce documentation possibilities, and these are largely unaccompanied, possibly uninformed cogitations of the lone fieldworker-woman-nutshell.
I was wondering whether the fact that light, being a dual phenomenon presenting properties of both wave and particle, makes for the asymmetry I will try to explain. Sound, on the other hand, I believe has the properties only of wave, and here there is no such asymmetry.
Ingold is actually talking about things that we really compare all the time, in terms of senses of perception, but that are not actually comparable. We hear sound, but we see in light, as he put it. There is no one to one equivalence here. Vision is equally mediated than hearing, or, let me put it this way: perception is not direct, unlike some eighteenth century philosophers tried to suggest.
Three things spring to mind:
1. With our senses something is odd, as we see objects but we hear sound. I suggest this is bullshit. We see in light (medium), but we label afterwards (categorisation).
2. If you have a skilled ear, you don’t just hear sound, but categories, expressed most commonly on a scale (C, D, E, F sharp, etc). We hear in air (medium), and we label if we can (categorisation). If not, we just listen, at best, ignore, at worst. We do not have such an extensive skilling-education of the ear happening as a rule in school.
3. It shows us that we need to be careful what we are talking about. And also that Peirce and Eco got it right as far as semiotics are concerned. Yeah! My heroes never die…
Note that I haven’t solved anything as far as wave-particle duality is concerned, but that theory might be an expression of how we feel towards light. I’d love to hear what you think about this!

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