That gives me a “you have reached your limit and can’t read any more” message. I found what seems to be the same book on Amazon UK and tried their “look inside” feature but failed to find anything saying anything to do with seeing or feeling photons.
Anyway. Whether to say “we detect photons” or “we detect photons striking our retina” or “we detect photons interacting with electrons in rhodopsin in our rod and cone cells” or “we detect electrical impulses in our retina arising from photon-electron interactions” or whatever is, it seems to me, a matter of terminology only. We’re describing the same process in any case. You (if I’m understanding you right) consider it definitely wrong to say that we detect photons, and I don’t yet understand why. (I can think of some possible reasons but I don’t find any of them convincing and I would rather not argue against a straw man.)
Am I correctly understanding your position? If so, why do you consider it wrong to say that when a photon interacts with an appropriate electron in a rod or cone cell in a human retina, that photon has been detected? What bad consequence ensues from using the word “detect” like that? (Or, if your objection isn’t about bad consequences: how is using the word “detect” like that inconsistent with other usages we’re attached to? Or … whatever it is that’s wrong, what’s wrong?)
The point is that a photon is a boson particle. At the moment we detect a collision, the photon ceases to exist. Prior to the collision a photon existed. We can only ever detect where and when a photon has struck something. Never the photon itself.
I know that photons are bosons. I know that they cease to exist when they interact with electrons. What I don’t understand is why you think that those facts (which are not in dispute) make it wrong to say that we detect photons.
That gives me a “you have reached your limit and can’t read any more” message. I found what seems to be the same book on Amazon UK and tried their “look inside” feature but failed to find anything saying anything to do with seeing or feeling photons.
Anyway. Whether to say “we detect photons” or “we detect photons striking our retina” or “we detect photons interacting with electrons in rhodopsin in our rod and cone cells” or “we detect electrical impulses in our retina arising from photon-electron interactions” or whatever is, it seems to me, a matter of terminology only. We’re describing the same process in any case. You (if I’m understanding you right) consider it definitely wrong to say that we detect photons, and I don’t yet understand why. (I can think of some possible reasons but I don’t find any of them convincing and I would rather not argue against a straw man.)
Am I correctly understanding your position? If so, why do you consider it wrong to say that when a photon interacts with an appropriate electron in a rod or cone cell in a human retina, that photon has been detected? What bad consequence ensues from using the word “detect” like that? (Or, if your objection isn’t about bad consequences: how is using the word “detect” like that inconsistent with other usages we’re attached to? Or … whatever it is that’s wrong, what’s wrong?)
The point is that a photon is a boson particle. At the moment we detect a collision, the photon ceases to exist. Prior to the collision a photon existed. We can only ever detect where and when a photon has struck something. Never the photon itself.
I know that photons are bosons. I know that they cease to exist when they interact with electrons. What I don’t understand is why you think that those facts (which are not in dispute) make it wrong to say that we detect photons.