A Simple Question...or 3!

[Cyberman]

Okay, while it is true that physicists invented the concept of physics in the sense of definable laws, it is not true to say that we then imposed them upon the Universe. It's rather like saying that there was no colour blue in the Universe before we invented a word for it.

Let's stretch your example a little. The universe doesn't have "primary colours". Just because you can mix magenta paint with yellow paint and produce red doesn't mean that's how the universe does it. When I was a kid I was taught that red is a primary colour, and I was also taught specifically that you can't make blue paint from other colours. I now know that you make blue paint by mixing cyan and magenta. We totally invented the concept of primary colours to make life easier for ourselves, even though not only does it totally not represent the way that the real world works, it also prevents us from utilizing the full visible colour spectrum when we use what we call "primary colours".

Wow, a missed point red herring - and I always thought they were just a myth. The Universe doesn't care how we perceive it or what we do with that perception. There exists a wavelength of the visible spectrum which we humans have agreed to refer to as "blue"; more accurately, it's a range of wavelengths, since there is no single colour blue. What you have to do to get those wavelengths is totally irrelevant. For instance, we only see an object as being blue - or any other colour you care to name - because it absorbs every colour in the spectrum apart from blue, which it reflects.

If language had developed in such a way that our word for that colour was something else, red for instance, all that would mean is that all references would be different to what we know. It wouldn't affect the fundamental blueness of that wavelenth range in the slightest. If anything it demonstrates the Universe's total disinterest in the affairs of a particular arrangement of carbon on a mote of dust orbiting perhaps the least interesting star in the Universe.

Since we want to talk about colours, here's another example, thrown in for interest rather than elucidation but it does demonstrate the use of language as it pertains to describing reality. Apparently Ancient Greek writings describe the sky as being bronze, not blue. So what was going on there? Some sort of volcanic dust activity? Ergot in the water? Aliens? Actually, some schools of thought hold that instead of describing the colour of the sky, the writers were describing the sky's appearance; ie, bright and shiny, like a polished bronze shield.