I'm quoting it. It's really damn interesting: ”
Legend has it that Isaac Newton created the first color wheel. As you recall, he did the classic experiment of breaking white light into 7 colors (ROY G BIV–Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet; he really only saw 6) by placing a prism in front of a beam of light coming through a slit in his curtain. Having just a slit of light is essential. If the beam is any wider, overlapping spectra recombine into white light again. Anyway, you are right, violet/red-purple, does not appear in the physical spectrum because red and indigo (purple) are at opposite ends of the spectra. Why then, violet? Descartes had arranged the 7 notes of the musical diatonic scale into a disc/wheel, probably to demonstrate how octaves follow one another. Newton mimicked Descartes circular format, joining the two ends of the spectrum with a credible hybrid, violet. (Of course, he didn’t see this in his visual spectrum, nor do we, but we have nevertheless labeled it “ultraviolet.”) To his credit, Newton gave each of the color as much proportional room on the wheel as they have in a spectrum–yellow is just a sliver, red is much wider. Also, remember Newton was a numerologist and 7 is a sacred number. Newton published all this in his Opticks (1704). The experiments has been done 20 years before. Curiously, most color wheels have an even number of colors–6, 8, or 12. This is so complements can sit opposite each other, red across from green. Of course, blue-green is the true complement of red, but that is another story related to the history of pigments. The oldest color wheel I know of is attributed to Anthansius Kirchner (1671, before Newton). It had 5 primaries and 10 secondary colors. Kirschner was also a numerologist and his color wheel has more to do with astrology and numerology than color theory. Most of the colors wheels that followed had 3 primaries (RYB) and 3 secondaries (OGP). After Newton, the most influential color theorist was the poet Goethe with 3 primaries and 3 secondaries. Munsell (1898) has 5 primaries and 5 secondaries. His color wheel is closer to the truth in that each primary (red) is located opposite of its true visual secondary (blue-green). I can't believe that for all the time I spent in art and physics classes, I've never been in a lecture that discusses this subject. I am left wondering at what other apparently physical phenomena are invented by our mind in order to create a continuum. This must happen in sound. Taste as well. What about emotion?Read also the first response to this blog about Newton's contribution.
Jeffrey Ventrella on May 8, 2012 at 6:39 pm said:
Dr. David Burton, Professor of Art Education at Virginia Commonwealth University, tells me that he’s been lobbying for a variety of color systems to be taught in schools, to reflect the diversity of influences, practices, and historical contexts for color theory. Regarding my blog post on color wheels, He provided the following extra background information:
Speaking of damn interesting color perception, a small proportion of women may be able to see more colors than the rest of us, due to a genetic coincidence resulting in four instead of the usual three types of retinal cone cells.It's really damn interesting
I am left wondering at what other apparently physical phenomena are invented by our mind in order to create a continuum.
I would guess all of them, in this sense: In the process of making them understandable we leave out what we don't immediately understand and shape everything else to make it comprehensible, or in the sense that whoever got there first created the structure and often that first structure sticks. You think?
I suppose so. Here we have a physical point of reference, the visible spectrum, but map our non-spectral color experience upon it, creating something that doesn't exist, but perhaps is easier to comprehend. I don't even know if that is the case. I've always considered purple and violet to be pretty much the same thing and never thought much about, although it's obvious they are not. And what the hell is indigo? But of course, all these basic color choices are arbitrary. I don't know if the color wheel does make it more understandable at all. Is happy the opposite of sad, or is it actually the opposite of ennui, and we have just grown accustom to speaking about it that way?