Why do polished stones look wet? How does the Twin Paradox work? What if Jupiter were a star? How can we be sure that pi never repeats? How does a quantum computer break encryption? Discover the answers to these, and other profound physics questions! This fascinating book presents a collection of articles based on conversations and correspondences between the author and complete strangers about physics and math. The author, a researcher in mathematical physics, responds to dozens of questions posed by inquiring minds from all over the world, ranging from the everyday to the profound. Rather than unnecessarily complex explanations mired in mysterious terminology and symbols, the reader is presented with the reasoning, experiments, and mathematics in a casual, conversational, and often comical style. Neither over-simplified nor over-technical, the lucid and entertaining writing will guide the reader from each innocent question to a better understanding of the weird and beautiful universe around us. Advance praise for Do Colors Exist?: “Every high school science teacher should have a copy of this book. The individual articles offer enrichment to those students who wish to go beyond a typical ‘dry curriculum’. The articles are very fun. I probably laughed out loud every 2-3 minutes. This is not easy to do. In fact, my children are interested in the book because they heard me laughing so much.” – Ken Ono, Emory University

Why do polished stones look wet? How does the Twin Paradox work? What if Jupiter were a star? How can we be sure that pi never repeats? How does a quantum computer break encryption? Discover the answers to these, and other profound physics questions! This fascinating book presents a collection of articles based on conversations and correspondences between the author and complete strangers about physics and math. The author, a researcher in mathematical physics, responds to dozens of questions posed by inquiring minds from all over the world, ranging from the everyday to the profound. Rather than unnecessarily complex explanations mired in mysterious terminology and symbols, the reader is presented with the reasoning, experiments, and mathematics in a casual, conversational, and often comical style. Neither over-simplified nor over-technical, the lucid and entertaining writing will guide the reader from each innocent question to a better understanding of the weird and beautiful universe around us. Advance praise for Do Colors Exist?: “Every high school science teacher should have a copy of this book. The individual articles offer enrichment to those students who wish to go beyond a typical ‘dry curriculum’. The articles are very fun. I probably laughed out loud every 2-3 minutes. This is not easy to do. In fact, my children are interested in the book because they heard me laughing so much.” – Ken Ono, Emory University

In this lively collection, Gardner examines the rich and hilarious variety of pseudoscientific conjectures that dominate the media today. With a special emphasis on parapsychology and occultism, these witty pieces address the evidence put forth to support claims of ESP, psychokinesis, faith healing, and other pseudoscience.

During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, two of the most significant theoretical works on color since Leonardo da Vinci's Trattato della Pittura were written and published in Germany: Arthur Schopenhauer's On Vision and Colors and Philipp Otto Runge's Color Sphere. For Schopenhauer, vision is wholly subjective in nature and characterized by processes that cross over into the territory of philosophy. Runge's Color Sphere and essay "The Duality of Color" contained one of the first attempts to depict a comprehensive and harmonious color system in three dimensions. Runge intended his color sphere to be understood not as a product of art, but rather as a "mathematical figure of various philosophical reflections." By bringing these two visionary color theories together within a broad theoretical context—philosophy, art, architecture, and design—this volume uncovers their enduring influence on our own perception of color and the visual world around us.

A Naive Realist Theory of Colour defends the view that colours are mind-independent properties of things in the environment. Keith Allen argues that a naive realist theory of colour best explains how colours appear to perceiving subjects, and that this view is not undermined by our modern scientific understanding of the world.

Awarded the 1986 Johnsonian Prize in Philosophy. This work on colour features a chapter, 'Further Thoughts: 1993', in which the author revisits the dispute between colour objectivists and subjectivists from the perspective of the ecology, genetics, and evolution of colour vision.

Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study in the philosophy of perception written in the medium of historiography. He considers the phenomenology and metaphysics of sensory presentation through the examination of an ancient aporia. Specifically, he argues that a puzzle about perception at a distance is behind Empedocles' theory of vision. Empedocles conceives of perception as a mode of material assimilation, but this raises a puzzle about color vision, since color vision seems to present colors that inhere in distant objects. But if the colors inhere in distant objects how can they be taken in by the organ of sight and so be palpable to sense? Aristotle purports to resolve this puzzle in his definition of perception as the assimilation of sensible form without the matter of the perceived particular. Aristotle explicitly criticizes Empedocles, though he is keen to retain the idea that perception is a mode of assimilation, if not a material mode. Aristotle's notorious definition has long puzzled commentators. Kalderon shows how, read in light of Empedoclean puzzlement about the sensory presentation of remote objects, Aristotle's definition of perception can be better understood. Moreover, when so read, the resulting conception of perception is both attractive and defensible.