{"id":515,"date":"2012-01-29T13:48:48","date_gmt":"2012-01-29T18:48:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cedarsdigest.wordpress.com\/?p=515"},"modified":"2012-01-29T13:48:48","modified_gmt":"2012-01-29T18:48:48","slug":"purple-doesnt-exist-some-thoughts-on-male-privilege-and-science-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/uncategorized\/purple-doesnt-exist-some-thoughts-on-male-privilege-and-science-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Purple Doesn’t Exist: Some thoughts on Male Privilege and Science Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t often write about gender and science, but I have been thinking and reading about it lately. If you were hoping for my typical aloof lecturing, or overblown (yet intellectual) ranting, just wait a few days (or you could revisit what I think of David Brooks<\/a> and Larry Summers<\/a>).<\/p>\n

At a wonderful dinner out at the recent Science Online Conference<\/a>, I found myself explaining why I consider myself a psychologist, even though some people don’t consider the study of visual perception “psychological.” This comes up often in response to the question: “Are you going to use your psychology knowledge to analyze me?” “I’m not that kind of psychologist,” I say. Then, because the food hadn’t come yet, and I had drunk a beer on an empty stomach, I waxed poetic about the color purple. I launched into an explanation of how we perceive color, and how an answer to this question must necessarily involve more than just physics and biology. We could talk about the wavelengths of light that we are sensitive to (400-700 nanometers).

\"The<\/a>
The Sliver of Perception, from Abstruse Goose<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThen, we could talk about how we have three different kinds of cone photoreceptors which are sensitive to different wavelengths of light. We call these cone receptors blue, green and red, but this doesn’t describe the appearance of the cone cell but rather what kind of light it likes. At this point, I like adding a line stolen from my advisor (Denny Proffitt) that purples don’t exist. In other words, there is no single wavelength of light that will cause us to see what we call purple. The only way that we see purple is through a combination of the activity of red and blue cones. I repeat for emphasis “There is no purple, it is all in your head.” There is nothing in the world that is objectively purple<\/a>. Of course, nothing is objectively red, green or blue either, but that’s another point for another time. With my students I like to review how this illustrates what a limited slice of the energy in the world we are sensitive to and even that we construct. The relevant physics in the world is a linear range of energy defined by wavelength, but our visual experience is of the color wheel. Our eyes “bend” this line and tie the ends of this line together to make our circular color experience. The purples (or pinks or magentas<\/a>, depending on how you label these colors) are the knot. Here is a great little video from minutephysics describing this (he uses pink instead of purple, and maybe magenta is even closer but the principle is the same)
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