Black is real sensation, even if it is produced by entire absence of light. The sensation of black is distinctly different from the lack of all sensations.
Interpretation
Black represents a unique sensory experience, separate from the absence of light, emphasizing the complexity of perception.
In this quote, Hermann Von Helmholtz explores the concept of black not merely as the absence of light but as a distinct sensation in itself. He suggests that our perception of colors and sensations is intricate and that even the perception of 'black', often associated with the absence of light, produces a unique sensory experience that cannot be equated with a complete lack of sensation.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of perception in an art class.
The total quantity of all the forces capable of work in the whole universe remains eternal and unchanged throughout all their changes. All change in nature amounts to this, that force can change its form and locality, without its quantity being changed. The universe possesses, once for all, a store of force which is not altered by any change of phenomena, can neither be increased nor diminished, and which maintains any change which takes place on it.
Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point of view when they make us acquainted with the law of a series of uniformly recurring phenomena, or, it may be, only give a negative result showing an incompleteness in our knowledge of such a law, till then held to be perfect.
Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.
It is intolerable that in our country citizens should feel so upset and under assault because of their religious choice that they would conclude that they have to hide.
There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine.
At the supreme moment of his dying Jesus so identified himself with men and the depths of their predicament and agony that no man can now sink so low that God has not gone lower.
Envy assails the noblest: the winds howl around the highest peaks.
Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen?
Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.
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