When I'm out in the daylight, and I see a tree, what I actually see is not the tree itself. What I see is the sun reflected off the tree. Likewise with rocks, grass and birds: it's always the sun I'm seeing reflected off them. This is possible because the sun emits all visible colors (or rather, our eyes evolved to perceive almost all EM frequencies that almost all solid matter deflects). I'm not seeing the things. I'm seeing the light. We live surrounded by the sun.
If you meant that there's no such thing as reflection, that's false
I've said "just reflection". I was referring to original poster intention and wanted to show him that photons on his retina probably originate from the tree he is looking. Or from the air in the middle. Or from his eye itself.
Absorbed and emitted many times. A rare photon we detect, is from the Sun.
When I first read the great great
grandparent
I almost wrote a response along the lines of the
grandparent,
because it triggered a pet peeve of mine where people use science and
equivocation to say that commonplace knowledge is wrong. (Example: "Your table
is not really solid; it's mostly empty space." No, solid is what we call
things like tables that act a certain way at a certain size scale.) But
looking at it again, especially in the light of the
parent,
I see it as exactly in the spirit of the
OP
(which, despite its use of an
unusual sense ... (read more)
An insight I had a while ago:
When I'm out in the daylight, and I see a tree, what I actually see is not the tree itself. What I see is the sun reflected off the tree. Likewise with rocks, grass and birds: it's always the sun I'm seeing reflected off them. This is possible because the sun emits all visible colors (or rather, our eyes evolved to perceive almost all EM frequencies that almost all solid matter deflects). I'm not seeing the things. I'm seeing the light. We live surrounded by the sun.
Is this too obvious? Inconsequential? Redundant?