On Color
I cannot see the color blue. Describe it for me.
Can you do it? I'm having trouble..
I mean, sure, you can tell me about things that ARE blue, that blue can represent things such as sadness, or perhaps even that it is "light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440-490 nm" (stolen from Wikipedia), but I would still have no idea what blue looks like, would I?
Color is so interesting because the only way to get someone to visualize a color is to mention... other colors! It's a kind of circular logic, isn't it? Purple is red and blue when combined, sky blue is a very light shade of blue, turquoise is a kind of blueish green... the list goes on. However, since blue is a primary color, it is simply blue. Now, I know I am not breaking any ground here, but trying to define a primary color is like trying to define a simple word such as "is." Sure, you probably can define it, but such a definition would be a hell of a lot more complicated than the word itself. Anyone who speaks English knows what "is" means, but not in terms of words, it's more like on an instinctual level. They just know. Same with the color blue, very difficult to put into words exactly what it is, we just know.
Another interesting observation about color that I have is about how it is perceived. How do I know that what I see as blue doesn't look to you more like say... red? We are both looking at the exact same object, and we both agree that it is blue, but I really wonder if the color we see is actually interpreted in the exact same way by our brains. It probably is, but I still find it interesting to ponder.
I also wonder what a new color would look like. Of course, this is impossible since we as human beings are only capable of seeing the visible light, which is sandwiched between the infra-red and ultra-violet spectra, so we see all of the colors that we will ever be able to see. I only wonder this because in a game I play, there is a race of creatures who can see in the ultra-violet spectrum, so i wonder, quite futilely, how they would see it. No one will ever know.
By the way, I can see the color blue just fine. I was merely making a point.
Alright, enough of this.
Can you do it? I'm having trouble..
I mean, sure, you can tell me about things that ARE blue, that blue can represent things such as sadness, or perhaps even that it is "light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440-490 nm" (stolen from Wikipedia), but I would still have no idea what blue looks like, would I?
Color is so interesting because the only way to get someone to visualize a color is to mention... other colors! It's a kind of circular logic, isn't it? Purple is red and blue when combined, sky blue is a very light shade of blue, turquoise is a kind of blueish green... the list goes on. However, since blue is a primary color, it is simply blue. Now, I know I am not breaking any ground here, but trying to define a primary color is like trying to define a simple word such as "is." Sure, you probably can define it, but such a definition would be a hell of a lot more complicated than the word itself. Anyone who speaks English knows what "is" means, but not in terms of words, it's more like on an instinctual level. They just know. Same with the color blue, very difficult to put into words exactly what it is, we just know.
Another interesting observation about color that I have is about how it is perceived. How do I know that what I see as blue doesn't look to you more like say... red? We are both looking at the exact same object, and we both agree that it is blue, but I really wonder if the color we see is actually interpreted in the exact same way by our brains. It probably is, but I still find it interesting to ponder.
I also wonder what a new color would look like. Of course, this is impossible since we as human beings are only capable of seeing the visible light, which is sandwiched between the infra-red and ultra-violet spectra, so we see all of the colors that we will ever be able to see. I only wonder this because in a game I play, there is a race of creatures who can see in the ultra-violet spectrum, so i wonder, quite futilely, how they would see it. No one will ever know.
By the way, I can see the color blue just fine. I was merely making a point.
Alright, enough of this.