We cannot tell the difference between a color which is a mixture of two (or more) frequencies of light, and a pure color, whereas we can tell chords from notes. (In spite of notes having harmonics).
We may be able to point at a red object and call it red. But there are are so many hues of red that this is about as accurate as being able to identify which octave a note is in. When you think that two objects are about the same hue of red, and the put them side by side, you generally find that they are totally different. Color also changes with lighting. A uniformly colored surface does not appear to be the same color if it is not uniformly illuminated, or does not uniformly scatter light in all directions.
When it comes to sound, we may be poor at identifying a pitch, but it seems we are fairly good at identifying EQ curves. Firstly, we can recognize people by their voices, which are the result of a tone's profile being shaped by the vocal tract. In relation to this, we can tell an AAAAH from an IIII, also, regardless of the speaker's pitch: whether the speaker is a man, woman or child. Or even whether the vowel is being whispered. Speakers of languages that have certain vowels that are very near to each other can distinguish those vowels, like some higher "a" versus a slightly lower "a".
Yes. Another key thing with colour is we can't visually see the difference between a full spectrum (like sunlight) and where there only a few peaks being broadcast (like an LED display) as long as they fall on the cones similarly.
Aurally we are incredibly good at understanding ratios, which the fundamental basis of music, in a way that the eye is not. Whether we can hear and state the difference between F4 and F#4 is simply not a priority of the body as these scales are constructed culturally.
The eye and ear are simply built very differently for different purposes.
Indeed. The ear is a one-channel spectrum analyzer and the eye is a camera with a two very distinct regions each serving different purposes. Both of these then have a ton of post-processing done in the brain before their outputs are presented to higher order functions.
I'll agree and add one example: from a repeated sequence of played notes, and a repeated sequence of flashing colors - I can readily identify a modified note, however not a modified color. For context imagagine 10 seconds of a song VS 10 seconds of flashing lights... If on the 3rd repetition of the pattern, one random note was changed and one random color was changed, which change would be most immediately obvious?
> We may be able to point at a red object and call it red
That's still better than most people's pitch recognition. Play any note in the C scale to a random person (even someone who plays an instrument and has some musical skills) and their note identification will be barely a guess.
False comparison - there are about 10 octaves in the audible spectrum. Telling E4 from F4 is like distinguishing two slightly different blueish greens. A better comparison would be to classify sinewaves into bass/mid/treble, which I'm pretty sure most people can do.
>We cannot tell the difference between a color which is a mixture of two (or more) frequencies of light, and a pure color, whereas we can tell chords from notes. (In spite of notes having harmonics).
Wouldn't we have to be able to distinguish polarity to tell the difference?
I don't think polarity has anything to do with this. The idea is that we can't distinguish at all between two independent light waves, one at ~600nm (red) and one at ~540nm (green), vs a single light wave at ~580nm (yellow).
The eye is receptive to three colors, that's it.
We cannot tell the difference between a color which is a mixture of two (or more) frequencies of light, and a pure color, whereas we can tell chords from notes. (In spite of notes having harmonics).
We may be able to point at a red object and call it red. But there are are so many hues of red that this is about as accurate as being able to identify which octave a note is in. When you think that two objects are about the same hue of red, and the put them side by side, you generally find that they are totally different. Color also changes with lighting. A uniformly colored surface does not appear to be the same color if it is not uniformly illuminated, or does not uniformly scatter light in all directions.
When it comes to sound, we may be poor at identifying a pitch, but it seems we are fairly good at identifying EQ curves. Firstly, we can recognize people by their voices, which are the result of a tone's profile being shaped by the vocal tract. In relation to this, we can tell an AAAAH from an IIII, also, regardless of the speaker's pitch: whether the speaker is a man, woman or child. Or even whether the vowel is being whispered. Speakers of languages that have certain vowels that are very near to each other can distinguish those vowels, like some higher "a" versus a slightly lower "a".