The Failure of Land’s Experiments

By Steve Badger

Endnotes

1 Throughout this essay, "science" is used in a narrow way to refer to the natural sciences and does not include the social sciences. If you cannot recall a general outline of the scientific method, before continuing, consult a text or visit this web site: http://www.intrcom.com/~sbadger/method.html. The quotation in the first epigraph was found at http://www.muohio.edu/~schafesd/documents/intro-to-sci.htmlx.

2 For an excellent overview, see "Important Dates in Vision Science: A Chronological History of Vision Research: 1600-1960"; http://www.socsci.uci.edu/cogsci/vision/yellott_dates.html.

3 Technically these are not correctly called infrared and ultraviolet light. The term "light" refers to EMR that we can detect with our eyes; IR and UV are not visible. By the same token, the phrase "visible light" is redundant.

4 The abbreviation nm stands for nanometers and is 1/1,000,000,000 of a meter.

5 Don’t overlook the fact that color vision is a very complex process that includes: 1. The physics of light discussed here; 2. The anatomy of the eye (biology); 3. The biochemistry/physiology of eye pigments and nerve impulse transmission; and 4. The activity of the brain in interpretation (which can be "fooled").

6 Here the term evolutionary is used in a general sense and is not referring to the theory of origins.

7 Many scientists and perhaps most science texts still view scientific progress as evolutionary.

8 Kuhn, Thomas S. "Crisis and the Emergence of Scientific Theories" and "The Response to Crisis" in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd edition, Enlarged. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970, pgs.66-76 and 77-91. Information in the preceding two paragraphs is also based on these chapters in this book.

9 The Church rejected this theory on the basis that it contradicted the clear teaching of Scripture: "Say among the heathen that the LORD reigneth: the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved…" (Ps 96:10, KJV). They argued that to embrace the Copernican model was to reject the authority of the Scriptures.

10 If you want to know more about Alfred Wegener or plate tectonics, visit these web sites: http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/dynamic.html, http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/wegener.html, or
http://www.pangaea.org/wegener.htm.

11 Sometimes a pouch (balloon) develops on the colon (large intestine); this pouch is called a diverticulum. If the diverticulum becomes inflamed, it is called diverticulitis.

12 Doctors reasoned that since fiber increased the size of the waste in the colon, feces containing substantial fiber must push out harder on the walls of the large intestine. Decrease the fiber, they thought, and decrease that pressure. Though a high fiber diet increases the diameter of the waste, it also makes it softer and moister and requires less intestinal wall pressure to be moved through the colon and out of the body.

13 See Mayo Clinic’s Health Oasis on the Internet at http://www.healthatoz.com/ for more information.

14 During the time that this was happening, I asked a physician friend why doctors were still prescribing traditional therapies instead of antibiotics for ulcers. "Doctors tend to do what they know," was her response.

15 Specifically, this article is written for students taking my "Christian Faith & Natural Science" course at CBC.

16 Do not confuse this B&W film with B&W negatives. These were positives—very much like color slides, but they were black and white.

17 Land, Edwin. "Experiments in Color Vision" Scientific American (May 1959): 84-99; "The Retinex Theory of Color Vision" Scientific American 237:6 Dec. 1977: 108-129; "Color Vision and the Natural Image. Part I." Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) 45 (1959) 115-129; and "Color Vision and the Natural Image. Part II." Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) 45 (1959) 636-644. The first two articles are less technical, easier to read, and more likely to be available in a public library.

18 Why did Land conduct these unusual experiments? He was repeating the experiments of James Clerk Maxwell, performed about 1861, which were the foundation for the development of color photography.

19 Do not think that this experiment is so sophisticated that only professional scientists with expensive laboratory equipment can conduct it. I know a high school student who duplicated Land’s work as part of a science fair project. You can duplicate it for $10-15—if you can borrow a couple of slide projectors.

20 For example, if you mix yellow and blue pigments you get green, but if you mix yellow and blue lights, you get white. For a fuller discussion of this, consult pp.263-269 of Hewitt, Suchocki, and Hewitt’s Conceptual Physical Science, 2nd edition. NY: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1999, any college physics text, or Peter Kaiser’s The Joy of Visual Perception: A Web Book at http://www.yorku.ca/eye/ (York University, Toronto, Ontario).

21 Quite suprisingly, full color was also present (though a little subdued) if he held only the red filter in front of the projector with the red record and no filter in front of the green record! Since this image was made of red light and white light, the CCVT would predict this image would be black and red (or pink). If you find the report of full color incredible and wonder if I am just believing the reports, be assured that I have seen this myself. One scientific journal that published Land’s early work was so sure readers would find it difficult to believe that they included B&W transparencies and color filters with instructions for readers to see it for themselves.

22 Land coined this term as a combination of the words retina and cortex (from cerebral cortex, that portion of the brain responsible for vision) because he was unsure where the color sense resided.

23 Land, Edwin. "Experiments in Color Vision" Scientific American (May 1959): 87. He did admit that if you set up a lab experiment in which an object reflects only one wavelength (band) of light, it would have that color. But he argued that this is not the way we see things in the real world.

24 Ibid., 88.

25 Ibid., 89.

26 Montgomery, Geoffrey. "Color Perception: Seeing with the Brain." Discover (Dec. 1988): 56. Emphasis mine.

27 Some of these are included in the bibliography.

28 Walker, Jearl. "The Amateur Scientist: Experiments with Edwin Land's Method of Getting Color out of Black and White." Scientific American. (June 1979) 189.

29 http://vision.stanford.edu/public/VisLunch/abstract/abstract961115.html (dated November 15, 1996)

30 If you have access to the Internet, you might look at these sites: http://dragon.larc.nasa.gov/viplab/projects/retinex/retinex.html and http://dragon.larc.nasa.gov/viplab/projects/retinex/background/background.html

31 "Retinex Image Processing: Improving the Visual Realism of Color Images." http://dragon.larc.nasa.gov/viplab/projects/retinex/background/background.html

32 You can see this at http://dragon.larc.nasa.gov/viplab/projects/retinex/background/retpubs.html

33 Montgomery, Geoffrey. "Color Perception: Seeing with the Brain." Discover (Dec. 1988): 57.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., 58-59.

37 For an explanation, see Land, Edwin. "The Retinex Theory of Color Vision" Scientific American 237:6 (Dec. 1977): 126.

38 About 1995 I had an encounter with a seminary student who had a bachelor’s degree in physics from a state university. His reaction (I believe) is typical. After hearing a brief presentation of Land’s work and Retinex Theory, he ridiculed the idea that the CCVT was not a complete answer. He challenged the identity of this unknown Edwin Land and his education. He questioned whether Land’s work was published in reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals. He was sure no one had ever duplicated these experiments. Finally, in desperation, he resorted to ad hominem against both Land and me. The Retinex Theory was completely incommensurable with his paradigm. He refused to listen to anyone or anything that challenged his grid.

39 See "Color," Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia.

40 For example, Dr. Ralph Siegel, Assistant Professor at Rutger’s CMBN, included Land’s work in his lecture notes on color vision (http://cortex.rutgers.edu/cmbn/faculty/siegeldocs/sensperc/lect4.html).

41 Kuhn, pp.77-91.

42 For a good presentation see Roark, Dallas M.. "Knowledge and Method in Science, Philosophy, and Religion." In Introduction to Philosophy. Dalmor Publishing, 1982, pp.46-60.

43 Also known as the Principle of Parsimony, Ockham’s Razor posits that when two competing theories both explain all observations equally well, the simpler is more likely to be true. Note this is a guiding principle, not a law.

44 Bergman, Jerry. "Censorship in Secular Science: The Mims Case." Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 45 (March 1993): 37-45; Greenberg, Dan. "Fraud and the Scientific Method." New Scientist 112 (Nov 6, 1986): 64; and, "Researcher Faked Data, Officials Charge." (AP) The (Springfield) News-Leader. Nov. 26, 1994, p.7A. I am confident a little library work will produce many more such reports.