Why is the Universe Comprehensible?

[AtheistCrusader]

80. But we CAN comprehend the conversation.

And I just took your example one step further to contrasting with a color that NO human can see.

For fuck's sake, the scientist that discovered the nature of the swallow-tail butterfly's remarkable ability to perceive colors we cannot, is himself mostly red-colorblind.

He devised tests to empirically show what they can and cannot see, from within the eye structure and without on animal behavior.

We CAN comprehend the 'conversation' in this context. Where we cannot with our own sensory powers, we often devise tests and even machines to gather the data for us, since our perceptive powers are in some cases more limited than the subject phenomena at hand.

We don't need to be able to see ultraviolet with our own eyes, to comprehend how and what a swallow-tail butterfly can see. We can even devise machines that will see it for us, and interpolate that information into spectra we CAN see.

We can see HOW they see with their multi-faceted eyes, we can see how their facets have pigment filtering that works much like colored sunglasses work for us. Yes, at some point we CAN say we understand the 'conversation' when we can see what the butterfly sees, even if we cannot 'see' the light itself with our own eyes.

Also, we discover amazing things about the cognitive powers of animals all the time, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that lizard, just because you don't know how to communicate with it.


Edit: Flip the problem. If we can't communicate holes in perception, how can colorblind people express to us to this level of detail, various forms of colorblindness, if they don't even know what they are missing? Therein lies your answer.