Seeing Dark Things
The Philosophy of Shadows
Sorensen, Roy Professor of Philosophy, Dartmouth College
Print publication date: 2008 (this edition)
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2008
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-532657-4
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326574.003.0004
 

Roy Sorensen
A conceptual artist suspends a solid cone beneath a lamp to cast a shadow. The shadow has the shape of a truncated cone. (The cone looks like the triangle in the letter A. The shadow looks like the area below the triangle.) The artist next slides a dark brick of the same shape and color as the shadow into the exact spot occupied by the shadow. This intrusion leaves no room for the shadow, so it is destroyed. This snug fit also makes the brick invisible because the brick is no longer absorbing light. So what is the observer seeing?
Keywords: solid, shadow
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326574.003.0004
Quick Search Form
 
scroll up fast
scroll up
 
scroll down
scroll down fast
Seeing Dark Things