Bellona Times
speaker
1,919 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 1 Aug
Bellona Times’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
In the search for certainty it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and in some sense, no doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them.
But any statement as to what it is that our immediate experiences make us know is very likely to be wrong.
It seems to me that I am now sitting in a chair, at a table of a certain shape, on which I see sheets of paper with writing or print.
By turning my head, I see out the window, buildings and clouds, and the sun.
I believe that the sun is about 93 million miles from the earth.
that it is a hot globe many times bigger than the earth that owing to the earth's rotation it rises every morning and will continue to do so for an indefinite time in the future
I believe that, if any other normal person comes into my room, he will see the same chairs and tables and books and papers as I see, and that the table which I see is the same as the table which I feel pressing against my arm.
All this seems to be so evident as to be hardly worth stating, except in answer to a man who doubts whether I know anything.
Yet all this may be reasonably doubted, and all of it requires much careful discussion before we can be sure that we have stated it in a form that is wholly true.
To make our difficulties plain, let us concentrate attention on the table.
To the eye it is oblong, brown, and shiny.
To the touch it is smooth, and cool, and hard.
When I tap it, it gives out a wooden sound.
Anyone else who sees and feels and hears the table will agree with this description, so that it might seem as if no difficulty would arise.
But as soon as we try to be more precise, our troubles begin.
Although I believe that the table is really of the same color all over, the parts that reflect the light look much brighter than the other parts, and some parts look white because of reflected light.
I know that, if I move, the parts that reflect the light will be different, so that the apparent distribution of colors on the table will change.
It follows that if several people are looking at the table at the same moment, no two of them will see exactly the same distribution of colors, because no two can see it from exactly the same point of view, and any change in the point of view makes some change in the way the light is reflected.
For most practical purposes, these differences are unimportant, but to the painter they are all important.
The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense says they really have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.
Showing 581–600 of 1,919 · page 30 of 96
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