Comments on: Color and Reality

By: Albert

Albert — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:51:53 +0000

Interesting! I long am pondering about a related question, not having to do with colour but with geometry, as it is perceived by human beings. I think we are (almost) all able from young adults on to tell what the definition of a square is and how to recognize a square object with almost 100% certainty. The light we see in our eyes is guided by nerves to our brain. There this information is somehow mapped to produce an image to our consiousness. This image represents reality to the individual, beside colour also shape. Two persons looking at the same square agree that it is a square. Both recognize the same characteristics of that square, or, the mapping in both their brains produces the same geometrical info to their consiousness. How can the brain be sure that the image of reality presented to our consiousness is the actual geometrical situation of reality? For example, it should be easy to apply a conformal mapping to this image and present this to our conciousness. A distorted image would be the result but in that case this person should tell that the actual square is not at all a square but some weird twisted shape.

Try to create a model of the eyes using optical fibers that guide the light as in nerves and project these dots of light to a screeen such that the original image is seen again. This already is quite difficult…

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:01:48 +0000

True, but it could also be argued that emotional links to colors are the result of cultural influence.

http://webdesign.about.com/od/colorcharts/l/bl_colorculture.htm

By: Geoff

Geoff — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:39:08 +0000

Hi Thuto,

I think of black as the absence of color – the “canvas” on which our mind draws the other colors we perceive. Up to you and your semantics if you want to consider it a color or not!

By: Thuto Baakile

Thuto Baakile — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:37:49 +0000

Ok, so what am picking up is that color is percieved, and about Pink, Thank you, now where is black in the spectrum, what wavelength of photons corespond to black?, and if it does not appear in the spectrum, does this therefore mean that black is not a color? How do we then see black objects? i thnk we should keep in mind that black absorbs all the wavelengths of light and reflects none back to the eye.

By: Patti

Patti — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 19:20:57 +0000

Because it’s pretty….:)

By: phil

phil — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 17:20:05 +0000

Any speculation as to why little girls all over the world love the color pink?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 01:25:23 +0000

I’ve always wondered the same thing about individual spectra, and this is the first I’ve heard of the idea being explored. Thanks for the informative post!

By: Geoff

Geoff — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:49:14 +0000

I believe you could see two peaks, corresponding to red and blue – or one of the many other combinations of colored photons that could mix to produce pink mapped out by the CIE 1931 color space.

Here’s a page that has spectroscopy results for various pink LEDs: http://ledmuseum.candlepower.us/ledpink.htm

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:49:16 +0000

Using spectroscopy, could one measure the wavelength of light emitting from the “pink” area?

By: andy

andy — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 21:32:50 +0000

also consider then that due to the ‘colours’ our brains ‘see’ we might actually all have the same favorate colour, tho its actual mesurable wavelength being the different.

however an argument against this might be how we describe how a colour makes us feel, most noticable with temprature, red being warm and blue being cold.