Under Construction!!

Space and Counterspace – by Nick Thomas – Ch.1 – Part 2 – Qualia

Feb 14, 2020

(Continued from Space and Counterspace – by Nick Thomas – Ch.1 – Part 1 – Open mindedness).

In his third paragraph, Nick Thomas tells us that science requires the establishment of objective standards – free from personal opinion. Qualities are difficult to define objectively, so science has confined itself to just two shareable, objective foundations:

Measurement
Number.

The success of science and technology is a demonstration of the effectiveness of such an approach.

Galileo was the first to separate what he called primary and secondary qualities:

Primary qualities are those which can be quantified – length, time, mass
Secondary qualities are those which are experienced, such as colour and taste.

Nick Thomas is careful to point out that colour, as meant here, is something which one directly experiences. These may only be correlated with the wavelengths of electromagnetic waves in the visible spectrum by physicists in a laboratory.^[1]

In philosophy the term qualia is used to refer to directly experienced qualities. A quale is a unit of quality, such as a particular shade of blue. Those with normal, healthy vision describe the same or very closely similar experiences of colour.^[2] Galileo categorised qualia as secondary qualities, for – by definition – they cannot be quantified.

However, Nick Thomas notes that all so called primary, objective measurements are made by means of the human scientist’s personal, mostly visual, sensory experiences – reading the dials on instruments, or the lining up of an object being studied with the markings on a ruler. All of these personal sensory experiences are qualia, and so – by definition – cannot be considered as Galileo’s primary qualities. This paradox can only be resolved if one removes this artificial divide between objective science and subjective personal experience.

1. I recall reading (possibly in Sepper’s book Goethe contra Newton, 1988) that Newton acknowledged that colour may only be associated with physically measurable properties of light, but colour-as-such is a human experience – however Newton, in common with many others who should know better, often refer to colour as if it were a physical, measurable property of light – which it is not. It would be useful for me to find references I can quote on this.

2. This is something which is best explored under the chapter on Goethean Science. Though the concept of qualia goes back to the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, the word is relatively modern. Again, this requires some references.

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