many philosophical topics my view is that you simply can't deal ith he

philosophical problem of color adequately if you don't have some understanding of

the relevant science

the eye responds to a rather narrow band of electromagnetic radiation between

about 400 to 700
nanometers of the spectrum and this is designated visible light this

wavelength is the distance between successive Peaks or troughs

frequency the number of waves per second
higher frequency more waves per second means shorter wavelength
an amplitude difference between peak and trough
shorter wavelengths carry greater energy as the higher
amplitudes

wavelength determines the color of the light

amplitude determines the brightness or intensity of the light

the basic processes of light are :

1. emission (sun, lamps)
light energy interacts with different mediums:
2. absorption
3. reflection
4. transmission

absorption: occurs when light energy is transferred to a surface

to the object
the energy of the photon is transferred usually to the electrons of an atom

different physical structures will absorb different wavelengths of

light absorption depends on the the vibrational frequencies of the electrons1

1
electrons in atoms and molecules tend to vibrate at very specific frequencies
when a light wave of a particular frequency interacts with electrons that
vibrate at that same frequency those electrons will absorb that light and it
will be converted into a different form of energy:
reflection :light bounces off an object
transmission :when the light travels through the object or through the medium and
again
different wavelengths can be reflected
or transmitted

the blue color of the sky is caused by the scattering of light under normal
circumstances under a cloudless sky
the gas molecules in the atmosphere preferentially scatter short wavelength light
which we see as blue
during sunsets the light has to pass through more of the atmosphere
since it's coming in at an angle and the the shorter wavelengths are simply
scattered away which leaves a yellow
that's why we have a blue sky in the day and then as the Sun is
setting the sky will sort of get a yellow err sort of hue

the blueness of water has two sources:

first of all water simply reflects the blue of the sky
second the vibrational transitions of the molecules of water so that's where
molecules gain vibrational energy that these occur more readily at lower energies
so that's the longer wavelength

so water absorb is mostly longer wavelength

he shorter wavelength light which appears bluer is hardly

absorbed at all

the blue of a rainbow is caused by dispersion rainbows require

sunlight and water droplets 2

light travels at different speeds in different mediums

in particular travels slower in water than in air

in this case vibrational energy

2
sunlight enters the water droplet and then is reflected off the back of the
inner side of the droplet
so when light enters a water droplet its refracted

the bodies of some beetles: beetle shells have a series of very fine plates or ridges
which are oriented in different
directions

the color have a layer of pigment below the

plates that enhances the colors
most

the same color can have a very striking variety

of physical causes
and the converse is also true: different colors have can can
have very similar physical causes

emeralds are green and rubies are red

but the chemical compositions and the crystal structures of emeralds and
rubies are very similar
in fact the green of emeralds and the red rubies are both caused by the same
impurity: it's caused by aluminium ions being replaced
with chromium ions
so chromium produces green in emerald and it produces red in
rubies the different colors arise
because in emeralds: the crystal feel strength is slightly weaker the the host
molecules interact with the chromium
more weakly and that produces different colors

we see colors in : dreams and hallucinations

perhaps caused by drugs

we can induce experiences of color by direct electrical stimulation

of relevant parts of the brain
there are various types of synesthesia in which experiences of color can be caused
by other sensory inputs for instance people report seeing colors when they hear
noises
so: color blue
can be caused by many many different kinds of physical causes and the two
different colors may be caused by similar physical causes

let's take a look at the physiology of color perception:

here is an eye light is focused by the cornea and the lens and
it hits the retina at back of the eye
the fovea :a small part of the retina that provides our high acuity vision
photoreceptors

the retina is that we have: different types of cells organized in

layers so
at the bottom are photoreceptors which respond to light

connecting to bipolar cells connecting to ganglion cells now the only cells that are
directly sensitive to light are the photoreceptors
at the bottom so light travels through all of
these other cells before hitting the photoreceptors this
doesn't cause too many problems because
these cells are transparent

all the the ganglion cells have to connect back to the brain where the axons of the
ganglion cells leave the eye there are no photoreceptors and that causes the
blind spot

two types of photoreceptors: rods and cones

the main difference is in the outer segments

the larger number of disks rods are far more sensitive to

light than cones rods are saturated during daylight and are active during
nighttime vision when there's there's
not enough light for the cones
but rods are monochromatic they can't perceive color and this is because all rods
contain the same kind of photo pigments
so there's there's no way for rods to track differences in color
so we'll mainly be focusing on the cones

trichromatic theory which was developed in the 1800's3

now in Helmholtz noticed that all the
colors that we see can be produced by just three types of monochromatic light
red blue and green
on the basis of of this fact that various combinations of only three types of
light are sufficient to match any color young and Helmholtz predicted that the
retina contains three cone types different patterns of stimulation of
these three cone types produces the many
varied colors that we see
this prediction is correct :
the cone photoreceptors each contain one of three
different types of photo pigment and the three different types of photo pigment
are sensitive to different wavelengths
of light

okay the color that we perceive is based on the pattern of activity of all the
cones and
the crucial point here is that individual cones are colorblind and this
results from what's called the principle of univariant
a photon of light absorbed by a cone has the same effect on the cone no matter
what the wavelength of the light is
cones respond only to the number of photons absorbed
so a cone will signal more either when the wavelength moved
towards more moves towards the cones peak sensitivity or when the intensity
of the light increases very weak light whose wavelength is at the cones peak
sensitivity will mean that there are few
photons being produced but a large fraction of those photons get absorbed
on the other hand very bright light at a low sensitivity point will mean that
there are many photons around but few of them get absorbed
so the cone will
produce the same response in each case

3
by Thomas Yong and Hermann von Helmholtz
these differences in response will be preserved no matter what the intensity of the
light is so the visual system can use these differences in response to distinguish
wavelength from intensity

the human eye has say three cones

most animals have a different system
many mammals for
instance dogs and elephants are dichromatic they have only two types of
photo pigment which renders them
effectively red green colorblind

some humans different forms of colorblindness are caused by either lacking one or
more of the three photo pigments or by having an anomalous form of one of the
three
photo pigments more

there are animals with superior color

discrimination
mammals in general actually have comparatively poor color
vision in fact we've got poor vision in general and that's a result of our
ancestors living in caves where where
good eyesight was less useful ivory look
at birds birds tend to have better eyes
than us and they can see more colors
Hawks are tetrachromats they have four photo pigments with one in the ultraviolet
part of the spectrum there's
evidence that pigeons are Penta crow mats they have five photo pigments
mantis shrimps supposedly have twelve types so they potentially see colors beyond
anything we can imagine
twelve types of photo pigments it's yes
it's inconceivable be very interesting

if you stare at this image for twenty seconds or so and then

look away or close your eyes you will continue to see the image with the
colors reversed

second some color combinations are

impossible we can mix blue and red to
get purple but you can't generate a new
color out of blue and yellow

the opponent-process theory the basic idea is that visual perception involves three
channels black white or relative
luminance and then blue yellow and red green

the idea is that in each channel a

group of cells fires at a certain
neutral base rate a certain stimulus will either excite or inhibit them

this of course also explains why some color combinations are impossible you
can never see a yellowish blue because
this would require the same channel again a blue channel to be both excited
and inhibited at the same time
yellow light excites the cell blue light
inhibits it so that that just cancels
the response and leaves white and of
course the the black white channel plays
a role in this as well in determining
how bright the color is so this seems to
explain unique hues and
it also explains why the color palette is limited in the
way it is
what about after images what
idea is that cells can be fatigued when a cell receives the same stimulus for a long
period of time it's adapt and returns to its neutral base rate
you look at the red circle the cells are excited as you stare at the circle they become
fatigued and drop back down to the neutral the neutral rate
when you look away when the stimulus is turned off the the the relative proportion
of shorter and medium wavelength light increases

the opponent-process
theory was initially in competition with
the trichromatic theory but the current consensus is that they're both correct
in the 1950s Leo Herbert and Dorothea Jamison combined the two theories into a
two-stage model we we have three types of photoreceptors :
the long wavelength
medium wavelength
a short wavelength

although I've been talking about cells being inhibited and excited and opponent
channels and so on I take it with a bit of a grain of salt because we're still not really
sure how the opponent process mechanism is physically realized in the brain these
results are based on psychological
experiments but this there's still a lot
of debate about how exactly color
perception works in in the latest stages
of visual processing

final important part of color perception that I want to note is color constancy
this is where colors seem to remain the same under different kinds of illumination
look at a white piece of paper in daylight and then look at it in
incandescent light they light contains a
far higher proportion of short
wavelength energy so paper that's white
under incandescent light you would expect to look blue under daylight but
of course it looks white in both cases
experiment discussed by land conducted
by John McCain and John Benton they had participants view a display
that had just enough light to activate
their rods
we mentioned before that rods are sensitive to far lower levels of
light than cones are but rods can't see color so at this point the participants
just see black and white they then added a monochromatic illuminant near 700
nanometers adjusted just enough so they activated the long wavelength cones the
short wavelength and medium wavelength
cones were unresponsive despite this the participants were able to see nearly the
full range of color somehow interaction
between the rods and cones or visual
processing in
the brain is is somehow able to make up for this massive loss of
of stimulus so kamek constancy can be
the source of some pretty striking illusions which I will end with here's