Spiritual Optics. The creative use of pigments

What it is to be a Substance? and What it is to Exist? We need to establish knowledge about the man and the world on a firm basis and the information it provides must be tested for its accuracy and consistency with an external reality. We have to make the fundamental distinction between the living and the non-living matter. The scientific advances of the 19th and 20th centuries reinforced the materialistic position concerning the basic similarity of organic living and inorganic physical matter. The man is viewed as a product of natural evolution and is thought to be subject to the same laws of Physics and Chemistry or mechanistic principles.

We need a methodology to study philosophy and to understand philosophical statements. Logical Positivism, also known as Scientific Empiricism aims to clarify concepts in both everyday and scientific language. It describes analysis of language as the function of philosophy. This analysis of language and of concepts is important to understand questions of belief and ideology which affect what we think we ought to do individually and socially. I would use this method of ‘Applied Philosophy’ to analyze the concept of Spiritual Optics, the Spiritual dimension of biological coloration.

WHAT IS COLOR AND WHAT IS COLORATION?

The term ‘color’ refers to the spectral qualities of emitted or reflected light. The term ‘coloration’ is a dynamic and complex characteristic that has captured human interest and attention for a long time. The human interest to coloration ranges from purely aesthetic to the rigidly pragmatic.

The Concept of Whole Artist:

The term artist is used to describe a person who works in, or is skilled in the technique of any of the fine arts, especially in painting, drawing, and sculpture. The term artistry describes the artistic ability which includes the use of imagination, a feeling for form, and a feeling for effect. I am using the term ‘Whole Artist’ to discover the person who may have used imagination to create forms to produce desired effects while the form itself lacks the cognitive abilities to generate its own form.

Plants may produce flowers of different colors while they essentially lack cognitive abilities to recognize the visual effect of the color they produce.

BIOLOGICAL COLORATION:

Biological Coloration refers to the general appearance of an organism as determined by the quality and quantity of light that is reflected or emitted from its surface. This Coloration depends upon several factors:

1. The integrity and deployment of the structural units and features involved in the generation of color,

2. The color and distribution of the organism’s pigments, and the relative location of differently colored areas,

3. The shape, posture, position, and movement of the organism,

4. The quality and quantity of light striking the organism, including the seasonal light and temperature variations,

5. The psychological, behavioral, hormonal, and other physiological conditions associated with the use of color,

6. The visual capacity of the viewer.

The role of pigments in biological coloration

The biological coloration generated by the pigments of biological tissues that reflect or transmit light are known as biochromes. The organic compounds, biochromes, are classified according to the presence or absence of Nitrogen. Pigments produce color by selective absorption of light. The molecules of pigment absorb a limited range of wavelengths; the light that is not absorbed is reflected and its dominant wavelength determines the pigment’s color. However, it must be noted that biochromes are involved in the performance of various, pivotal, metabolic functions apart from imparting color. The natural coloration of living things is more complex than the visual sensory experience of the color associated with living things.

Pigments are substances that impart color to other materials. Most paint pigments are metallic compounds. Some metallic pigments occur naturally. Plants and animals contain pigments. Most opaque substances owe their color to a combination of scattering and absorption within the body of the material. The production of color depends upon the wavelength of incident light, the diameter of the pigment particle, and the relationship between the refractive index of the pigment and that of the vehicle in which the pigment particles are suspended. The color of a chemical compound depends on the selective absorption of light by molecules whose size or vibrational wavelengths or both lie between 3000 and 7000 angstrom. Selective absorption of visible light results from retardation in the relative speed or vibrational frequency of the many rapidly vibrating electron pairs found in the chemical compound. The chemical molecule is imparted a special motion or chemical resonance. If this molecular resonance involves short, rapid waves, the shorter, visible light waves (Violet and Blue) are absorbed, and the chemical compound appears Yellow or Orange. The Red-appearing pigments have slightly longer resonance values, absorb light from the Blue and Green regions of the light spectrum. Blue, and Green compounds result from cancellation of light in the Red, or Orange realms. Black substances absorb all light equally and completely; White compounds absorb no light in the visible spectrum. The color reflected by a pigment usually includes all the wavelengths of visible light except the absorbed fraction; the observed color of a compound thus depends upon the dominant wavelength reflected or transmitted. In most cases, the color observed by the viewer depends upon the optical absorption characteristics of the pigment, and the scattering effect caused by the medium in which the pigment molecules are suspended.

The role of pigments in biological coloration displays the role of an artist who chooses the pigments to generate a desired visual effect in organisms that have the visual capacity to recognize the color.

Simon Cyrene