If there was a flag that colored the streets, it was the LGBT flag. To explain its colors we have to go back to ancient Greece when the rainbow was seen by the goddess Iris as a magical path between heaven and earth.
If you look closely, there is a magical component to the rainbow, no matter how much Aristotle insisted on pointing out that this gradient was not due to a goddess, but to the echo of the light itself as it split into three colors (red, green and violet). This creates an optical illusion. From here, according to Aristotle’s accurate but incomplete explanation, the rainbow will reduce its magical origin; To paraphrase the poet John Keats, the rainbow will end up being part of the boring catalog of the everyday.
However, the colorful flashes of the rainbow will continue to captivate scientists like Newton, the last magician as Keynes described it. We must not forget that it was Newton who identified the seven colors of the rainbow with the seven alchemical elements (gold, silver, copper, mercury, lead, iron and tin) and, moreover, with the seven tones of our musical scale. According to the Pythagorean tradition, light rays caused vibrations of different intensities depending on their strength. According to Newton, the higher vibrations were identified with the stronger colors (red or yellow), while the lower ones were identified with the weaker colors (indigo blue and violet); The color white was created from the fusion of all these elements. In this way, Newton did not completely disregard the magical property of the rainbow when attempting to explain the phenomenon.
It is important to remember that for his experiment, Newton placed a glass prism in front of the only ray of light that entered a dark room. In this way, the beam passed through the prism and was reflected on the opposite wall, where the colors of the rainbow appeared. If we put drops of water in the place where we say prism, we will understand that w. Without them it would not take place.
However, the rainbow is not like an aurora, which exists even when no one sees it. For the rainbow to exist, in addition to the sun and rain, there must be an eye that captures the phenomenon, i.e. without the figure of the observer, this phenomenon would not exist. Therefore, the magical component cannot be separated from the scientific explanation, according to which the rainbow is due to the refraction of sunlight in raindrops.
But on the other hand, to claim that if it weren’t for our retinas, light wouldn’t break down into seven colors would be a way of reducing reality, since the colors into which light breaks down are continuous, so the differentiation of the indigo making from violets is as difficult as impossible.
Perhaps for this reason, the flag created by Gilbert Baker for LGBT pride lacks indigo. Red is what we identify with life, orange with health, yellow with sunlight, green with nature, blue with serenity and purple with spirit. With these things, in search of a correspondence between colors and categories – and without meaning to – Baker turned to Newton.
the stone axe It is a passage in which Montero Glez, with his desire for prose, exerts his particular attack on scientific reality to show that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.
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