ENROLL

Marty Baylor, Jason A Decker, Julia F Strand

If you had to explain to a blind person the nature of color, how would you describe it? Is it a property of objects, oscillations of an electric field, a feature of how the eye generates electrochemical signals to send to the brain, or perhaps a property of the experiences themselves? This team-taught course takes  a multidisciplinary approach to color, drawing from physics, psychology, and philosophy. We will explore topics such as the nature of light, visual anatomy, the process by which light is converted to a neural code, color mixing, linguistic differences in color processing, and how color leads us to confront the tension that sometimes exists between appearance and reality.

Prerequisite: Any introductory PHIL or PSYC course higher than 110 or any term of introductory PHYS course higher than 130 (PHYS 131 and 151 or 152 or a 10 week introductory course)

Julia F Strand

Students independently revise and extend the fall term paper, integrating the feedback from their faculty advisor.  Based on this work, students submit a final comps paper (approx. 20 pages) that makes original contributions to the field of psychology through critiquing existing psychology primary sources, applying empirically-supported psychological theories to new questions, generating potential applied guidelines, and/or proposing new theories or empirical studies based on published theories and empirical research.

Prerequisite: Psychology 399