- Did the human mind and human society impose circularity onto the color spectrum in order to contain it? Was this encouraged by the physiology of our eyes, in which various wavelengths are perceived, and mixed (mapping from a one-dimensional color space to a higher-dimensional color space)? Or might it be more a matter of the influence of pigments, and the age-old technology of mixing paints?
Might the color wheel be a metaphorical blend between the color spectrum and the mixing behavior of pigment?
Read also the first response to this blog about Newton's contribution.
The answer is physiological. According to the zone theory of colour vision, colour does not reside in the linear spectrum but is created by the visual system in the form of two opponent signals, red vs green and yellow vs blue. With their four possible combinations these create a circular range of hues: red, red and yellow, yellow, yellow and green, green, green and blue, blue, blue and red. When all wavelengths are present the red vs green and yellow vs blue opponent signals both cancel out, and we see the light as white: http://www.huevaluechroma.com/036.php
No, not a lurker, in fact I'm not really sure where I am yet! I have a Google Alert set for "Color Wheel" that brought me here. I think there's quite a lot of fiction in the quote below about Newton, but it's getting too late here for a detailed response just now. I have a few of my own thoughts about Newton's circle here:
http://www.huevaluechroma.com/071.php#Newton_s_hue_system
Are you familiar with that little half height floor in Being John Malkovich? You are pretty much there, but for the internet. In all seriousness, interesting article. Quoting you, quoting Newton: I don't think we can point to anything unlike this, correct?: up/down are sensations of gravity, temperature is a sensation of molecular motion, etc. Random thought: I can't think of any sensations that result from multiple physical phenomenon. Color and intensity, frequency and amplitude, perhaps... but nor from 'green and hot' or 'down and loud'. I wonder if any intelligence combines two unique phenomenon into a useful sensation.No, not a lurker, in fact I'm not really sure where I am yet!
Newton also said something very strange: he said that "the rays to speak properly are not coloured". By this he meant that a colour is really a sensation of the mind resulting from light, just like a sound is a sensation of the mind resulting from physical vibrations of the air.
Well, that's very exciting! Perhaps length would be at the objective extreme, but even there we at least sometimes need to make a distinction between physical and perceived length, for example in the T illusion. I see the gap between spectral distribution and colour as being at the other extreme, in that there are two gaps of subjectivity involved. With just three cone cell types we can't know the spectral distribution of a light, only some limited qualities of it (dominant wavelength and purity as defined by an opponent visual system), so many different spectral distributions look identical to us. And then these limited qualities that we do detect are tagged for us with entirely subjective experiences whose relationships have no basis in the linear spectrum. In between you have perceptions that correlate more directly (if non-linearly) with the physical stimulus, such as sound and vibration rate, or warmth and molecular motion.
This is great David, thanks for sharing. In fact, I think it deserves its own post. Also, wasoxygen mentioned in a comment on this thread that some women can perceive more colors than men. Is this a result of some women having either more cone cells? Again, thanks for sharing and don't be a stranger.The reason why primary colours come in sets of three is that human eyes have three types of light-detecting cells, called cone cells, used in seeing colour. L cones respond to all wavelengths, but respond most to those we see as yellow. M cones also respond to all wavelengths, but respond most to those we see as green. S cones respond most to wavelengths we see as blue and violet.
-This is something I likely learned about years ago but had forgotten. It's fascinating to think that our visual perception of our entire human experience is predicated by our cone cells. Do you know, are there animals with more cone cells that respond to different wavelengths than we do?
Yes, as indicated below, insects see ultraviolet. At the other extreme marine mammals have only one cone type, I think. A small minority of women are have four cone types, the usual L, M and S, plus a polymorphic variation of either the L or the M, but this doesn't necessarily mean that the retina is wired up to take advantage of the extra cone type. A recent investigation of 24 such women found that 23 had normal colour vision but one saw differences between pairs of stimuli that could be matched by all other observers.
I briefly learned about nectar guides in optics.are there animals with more cone cells that respond to different wavelengths than we do?
Images of a Mimulus flower in visible light (left) and ultraviolet light (right) showing a dark nectar guide that is visible to bees but not to humans
-How much of our experience while on psychotropic drugs is us enhancing our cone cells or some other such biology? theadvancedapes, is this part of what you are studying? Someday, perhaps we will be able to easily turn on and off such enhancements.
I'd wager a hefty sum that psychotropic substances don't enhance or modify the sensory receptors themselves, but that they change the way these signals are processed within the brain.
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?
Also worth noting here is the question "Why do we see the wavelengths that we do?". It turns out that the answer makes a strong case for the theory of evolution. According to Wien's black body radiation law and Planck's law, we can correlate the temperature of an object with the proportion of photons it emits at each wavelength. Well, wouldn't you know it, for a star with a surface temperature of 6000K (i.e. our sun), the distribution looks like this: For an emerging species looking to make use of the information contained in photons, doesn't it make sense that many evolved to see in wavelengths in which the most photons were available? Yes, other evolutionary advantages were offered by infrared and UV wavelength sensitivity, but I would argue that it's no coincidence so many different creatures utilize the "visible" wavelengths for their primary visual input. It would be fascinating to visit another solar system with a different temperature star and contrast any life that evolved there with what we're familiar with on Earth.
I think a cyclical/oppositional representation of color comes from the fact that when you work with color, or more specifically gamut, oppositionally is the only way it makes sense. I spent two days at Technicolor learning about gamut and color space and calibration; if we'd started with a "color stick" as our point of understanding we'd have been fucked. At least with a color wheel you understand blending.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/ interesting radiolab podcast about color
It's a great one, I listened to it on a road trip a while back. I second your suggestion.