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I've always wondered who originally decided what colors were? If as of today...everyone that saw a firetruck said, "look at that green firetruck" would that mean it was green, or still red?
Not all languages delineate colors the same way English does. Linguists divide the world into "Grue" languages and "non-Grue" languages, according to whether they make a distinction between Blue and Green. The two sets of languages differ from each other in quite a few other ways, as well. Some languages have only two words for colors: Grue and non-Grue. Everything that is blue or green is called one color, and everything else is called by one other word. Where necessary, they can use an attributive to differentiate hues in a group, as we have Navy blue and Sky blue. In fact, in some languages, there are several words for blue, depending on shade.
However, most modern languages now recognize the fundamentals of primary and secondary colors, which are confirmed by scientific pigment attributes, and not just perception, and have words for red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, as well as black an white (absence or presence of color, along with Gray). Most languages now have a word for brown, which is a complex of any three or more hues, so those ten are the only fundamental words for color that are relatively uniform through nearly all languages.
The human eye has only three different kinds of color receptors. Everything you see is interpreted by your brain according to how much of the light is reacted to by each of the three sets of receptors in your retina. If all three sets of receptor send the same intensity of signal to the brain, your brain classifies it as white (or weiss or blanc or belo, depending on the language your brain speaks). Most things in nature are brown, which means the light affects all three sets of retina receptors, and that is an example of a color that English doesn't bother breaking down into its variables. So English, really leaves most things in the universe within a pretty vague color word, brown.
I've always wondered who originally decided what colors were? If as of today...everyone that saw a firetruck said, "look at that green firetruck" would that mean it was green, or still red?
I recently had a physical where the doctor had me take the test for colorblindness. You know, the Ishihara test with the numbers hidden in a pattern of colored dots.
I failed 14 out of 15 tests. She asked me if I knew I was colorblind and I told her I see colors all over the place. What I see as yellow others see as yellow, I see green when others see green, etc. She told me I am probably seeing a different hue than what other people see. I questioned the credibility of the test. The conversation ended.
But she did get me to thinking that my yellow isn't the yellow the normal population sees and the colors that we see are based on our perception of the true colors of natural light.
There's a book called Color: A Natural History of the palette that you might find interesting. It goes into the symbolism of color and their acquired meanings and uses.
you see, when you're born, your parents "tell" you that the grass is green, and that the sky is blue...except, whatever color you're seeing may be different than what your parents are seeing, only they are telling you the name of that color you're seeing.
you see, when you're born, your parents "tell" you that the grass is green, and that the sky is blue...except, whatever color you're seeing may be different than what your parents are seeing, only they are telling you the name of that color you're seeing.
That is probably not true, for several reasons.
1. There are only three kinds of color receptors in the human retina, which consistently excite the brain in the same way. for the same reason that we all have ears on the sides of our heads. Bodies are very consistent. What is called 'red' always excites the same set of receptors on everyone's retinas.
2. Blue can range to nearly black, but red cannot. There is no way that you see "dark yellow" when I see navy blue. Everybody sees yellow as a color that cannot be dark.
3. Color also has saturation, which is revealed in a black and white photo. For example, in b/w, red is always darker than blue. We both see the same gray tone darknesses in black and white photos.
1. There are only three kinds of color receptors in the human retina, which consistently excite the brain in the same way. for the same reason that we all have ears on the sides of our heads. Bodies are very consistent. What is called 'red' always excites the same set of receptors on everyone's retinas.
2. Blue can range to nearly black, but red cannot. There is no way that you see "dark yellow" when I see navy blue. Everybody sees yellow as a color that cannot be dark.
3. Color also has saturation, which is revealed in a black and white photo. For example, in b/w, red is always darker than blue. We both see the same gray tone darknesses in black and white photos.
Thats really interresting. red is darker than blue on b/w photos(and my parents TV)? Yellow can't be dark. I never thought about that. interresting stuff
And the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other color.
But to answer the OP's question, they've found an ancient clay tablet in the Indus Valley that tells us it was Blarg The Cave-Painter who designated the colors in the first place.
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