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.
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 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. For example, we can examine the colorful hues of Chilean flowers, Mimulus luteus, Mimulus cupreus (Red Emperor), and Mimulus variegatus.
Arielle Cooley, a researcher at the University of Michigan studied these Chilean Mimulus flowers of different colors and found that the plants make the same type of anthocyanin pigment called cyandin. The study includes Thin Layer Chromatography Analysis of petal extracts. Each flower produces red-hued anthocyanins and the yellow carotenoids. The two pigment types in combination create the fire-hydrant red spots on the yellow flowers of Mimulus luteus. Cooley concluded the observations with the remark: “Like an artist mixing simple colors of paints on a palette to achieve a specific shade, the Chilean flowers achieve their visual effect using varying proportions of red and yellow pigments.”
WHO IS THE ARTIST?
No single function can explain the coloration of living things. We need a comprehensive theory that predicts the lines and patterns of coloration of plants and animals. An artist’s palette containing only three properly chosen colors is entirely adequate under most circumstances to produce the various visual effects of color that is observed. The optical mechanisms involved in the production of color are complex. Coloration is a dynamic and complex characteristic and the term must be clearly distinguished from the term ‘color’ which only refers to the spectral qualities of emitted or reflected light. It is apparent that plants, and animals have no cognitive abilities to produce the coloration by which they are recognized. However, the coloration displayed gives us a clue about the nature of the “Whole Artist” who could be using imagination, has feelings for the forms created and seeks satisfaction from the visual effects that he produced. If man has the ability called visual perception, he must use the ability to visualize the “Whole Artist” who is at work.
Simon Cyrene
The Rudolf-Rudi doctrine of Spiritualism 