Dear Simon,
On 25/7/2016 12:57 πμ, Simon Spero wrote:
On Sun, Jul 24, 2016, 3:39 PM martin <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Franco, All,
Dear Martin, Stephen, all :-)
The property "depicts" was meant to do it via a visual process,
in particular statues and paintings, that by their whole shape and
surface properties represent something. This means, by
surface properties and passive light reflection.
[all uses of "depict" or "depicts" that follow should be understood
as referring to P62, possibly with the second argument unspecified]
This roughly matches my understanding, which makes a couple of
Stephen's answers confusing; possibly because my questions were unclear.
1) a picture on an e-ink display does not depict.
This surprised me, as e-ink (and e-paper in general) work by passive
light reflection, and only require power to change the display.
The intended contrast was with the active OLED display, which emits
light, and requires continuous power.
Well, the question is again not what means "depicts", but which
defibnition is useful for cultural-historical reasoning. I'd argue that
the thing on the screen of the e-paper is accidental to the device. So,
it is simply inadequate to use a static property for what's at some
instant on its screen. If it is passive or not, is not
the problem, but that is is not persistent to the object.
Further, an instruction how to draw something, in analogy to a file
being instructions, cannot be regarded
a depiction in itself, I'd argue.
2) a picture that requires a UV lamp to be seen does depict.
This question was aimed at clarifying whether the image must be
produced by (subtractive) reflection of incident light, or if
fluorescence caused absorption of that light was sufficient.
Well, why not, as long as it is an intrinsic property. Many visible
colorants have fluorescence between visible
frequencies of light.
3) a ball-and-stick model of DNA is not a depiction of DNA.
Well, here is a question of particulars and universals. I'd argue it
does depict a structural abstraction of
some DNA molecule.
I am unsure why this is the case; it is a symbolic representation,
created by human activity, and intended to be decoded using the human
visual system without the assistance of specific equipment.
If it does not depict, then it is not clear that "Guernica" does.
I assume it is uncontroversial that "Photograph 51" depicts DNA?
What sort of photograph is this? Visible light would not reproduce
molecular dimensions. If it could
it would not depict DNA, but some DNA molecule, a particular one, or not?
Best,
Martin
Simon
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