``Notice the difference between your two examples...Your music example tests theory with practice (with instruments)...Your physics example remains theoretical...'' CB
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Continuing on in these practical examples, in the case of light, I think there is a great deal of practical (traditional) knowledge that bares on the theory of light. For example, any culture that grows plants for food has a whole rigamarole with seasons, and kinds of light that their favorite plants like. Certainly there are sun-gods and other metaphysical theories on how light works to make plants grow, what favorable and unfavorable light regimes need to be encouraged to get good results. Most of the US southwest Native Americans who grew corn, beans, squash and other foods knew exactly where to plant these and how to combined them for the maximum light advantages that each species preferred.
In bio-science language the responsiveness of corn to timing (lengths of night and day), light and particular wave lengths at that, is governed by phytachrome a light sensive molecule that releases or triggers the release of various hormonal systems to manage the timing of development. While we can be pretty sure the original Native Americans didn't know anything about phytachrome, they certainly knew how it worked. This means they knew for example how longer or shorter nights without light effected their plants, how different kinds of daylight effected corn---and these seasonal variation control the flowering, pollination, and growth of corn in very specific ways. One of the really interesting things about phytachrome is that is also sensitive to the infra-red spectrum. I wondered what this meant in relation to Native American cultivation. Then I remembered reading that some Southwestern tribes often used desert wash systems, areas directly against a cliff and other places with particular light, heat and moisture combinations. The importance here is that the walls radiate warmth at night. They were in effect managing phytachrome's response and other factors in corn development. Phytachrome and its interactions with the hormones is very complex. I'd have to re-read a bunch of stuff to explain and don't want to at the moment. So, then there are different physiological activities produced via the hormonal systems, dependent on the wave length received, total time received, and phrase of development by the phytachrome molecule. In some metaphysical, mytho-poetic sense, corn is light.
This reminds me to mention the laws of inheritance which had to be understood or at least worked out in practice in order to breed different kinds of corn for different purposes.
During my bio-science tech job, I grew corn, collected the pollen and then fertilized the silks, harvested the ears, dried and collected, sorted and labeled the seeds and started all over to see what we got with our crosses. The key to getting this to work is timing---and (as noted above) timing is dependent on the kind and amount of light and moisture present at particular points of development. When everything is ready, you cover the silks with small empty sacks to keep female plants from being pollinated. Meanwhile you collect pollen from male plants which is released at the about the same time in other sacks tied over the male silk (the antlers). Here is an overview:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/agf-fact/0128.html
The point being that I can see how this kind of practical breeding knowledge leads to understanding how genetics works, without a theory of genetics, i.e. Mendal. Just as an imaginary sketch, for a theory of mythological genetics, I could see naming this kind of corn with some family name and that kind of corn with another family name (and giving both a pedigree, i.e ancestorial lineage), and then breeding the family's offspring and discovering what the children look and taste like, how it works as flour, etc, or can be popped or roasted, etc. Cull the next children into those who look, taste, and work well for whatever the use, and those that don't. You plant the ones you like and grind up and eat the rest. This selection process can be (but not always) easy since the children are all collected in nice handy corn cobs. You can see some individual kernels are different from others since in some varieties, the kernels are different colors---a color coding system made to order (blue-brown, red, tan, yellow, white, wrinkly, wavey, etc). These are usually referred to as Indian corn. Here's a nice photo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Corncobs.jpg
We were selecting for a variety called Lazy, because it grows on the ground like a ground cover---looks like giant crab grass. There are a lot of different kinds of corn.
Here's nice article on the whole business. Go to the bottom (origins):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize
CG
