COLORS!
Okay. So it isn’t cognitive science that isn’t any fun. It is Francisco Varela. I have read a lot of his work and it seems to me that he has a stick up his ass because he thinks all cognitive scientists are computationalists and therefore everything he writes he emphasizes innerconnectivity and ‘synergy’ and talks about having a second renaissance that will be greater than the first by incorporating Tibetian Buddhism into Western thought. ANYWAYS enough about how much is dislike my teacher’s favorite guy. I am writing a 4-6 paper on color perception from a cognitive (both enactive and computational) and philosophical point of view. I had only really gotten to from a philosophical point of view at first of color theory, and it was incredibly dull. I really find philosophy to be quibbling over words and language. I bet if/when we can speak telepathically a major portion of philosophy will no longer be relevant.
But the computational and psychological/cultural views of color are extremely interesting. Things that are currently blowing my mind right now:
According to Brent Berlin and Paul Kay who conducted cultural/linguistic differences in categorization of colors. Cultures disagree about the number of “basic” colors, and the boundaries of those categories. English has 11: red, green, blue, yellow, black, white, gray, orange, purple, brown, and pink. The Dani tribe in New Guinea has 2: White-warm and Black-cool. It turns out that people virtually always agreed on the best example of a particular color category regardless of culture. Also, no matter how many color categories exist in a language, the categories always encompass the entirety of color space. The Dani tribe isn’t missing red and yellow, but considers it part it’s white-warm category.
(Warning, this might not make sense if you don’t have a rudimentary understanding of Linear Algebra, I am too lazy to define the stuff. If you want a better explanation read the lecture in Feynman’s Lectures in Physics Book I lectures #36 and 37 I think)
I was reading Richard Feyman’s lecture on color, and it was really mind-blowing for me. Humans are trichromatic (we have 3 color channels), unless you have colorblindness and are a dichromat. Because of this our color-space can be said to be 3-dimensional, and any three linearally independent colors can span all of our color-space. Or any linear combination of three linearally independent color ‘vectors’ can describe all the colors we see. In fact the generally assumed primary colors aren’t enough to span our color space using only non-negative combinations, but they do get most of it. Anyways, The whole point is there is no such thing as primary colors (In fact, feynman writes that claim was first made by Da Vinci). I got really excited because it is cool when something you learn can be applied through extension to something completely different. Also the notion of primary colors always seemed to make absolutely no sense to me.
If you were a pentachromatic bird it would take 5 color-vectors to span your 5-dimensional color space. Of course, it’s not like they just see more colors, their colors are fundamentally different than ours. Think about trying to represent 3-d or or 4-d objects 2 dimensionally. It cannot be mapped 1 to 1. I can’t imagine what it would be like for a bird to view colors anymore than I can imagine a 5 dimensional hypersphere.
I dunno this was random, but I was really curious how you guys felt about colors because the majority of you are artists. Especially since Peter Thompson was going to write a freaking book on it! I bet it isn’t in term of linear combinations and fuzzy set theory, but several prominent physicists (like Schroedinger as well as Feynman) came up with theories of color.
Katie (Jones) wrote:
That is really interesting! The English vs. Dani color categories reminds me of something we learned in Psych about memory and language. English really only has one word for the color yellow, in its basic sense, but I think it was Swahili (maybe?) divides yellow into two kinds of yellow, a lighter yellow and a darker yellow or something like that, and they have two seperate words for them. When shown a series of colors and told to describe if it was dark or lighter, the Swahili subjects were way more likely to remember whether the yellow cards they were shown were lighter or darker than the English subjects.. So basically because of their language, they were better able to remember that specific thing. I just think it’s interesting how language affects the ways we remember or think in general. There was a study that showed that bilingual people get different scores on the same personality test depending on what language they take it in… it’s weird. I wonder why different cultures/languages categorize colors in different ways?
It’s also weird to think about the different sense animals have, and the senses we’re missing out on. I remember when I first learned that sharks can sense electric fields, I was like “whoa!” I mean, I just wonder what that’d be like. Or when you see how much larger the light spectrum is than what we can see… anyway, sorry my comment was less about percieving colors/thinking philosophically about the nature of color and more about.. stuff I learned in high school/saw on the discovery channel when I was 10.
Posted on 12-Mar-07 at 4:03 pm | Permalink
Emma Barnum wrote:
I always wondered if we all see the same color… like grass is green, but what if green to me looks different than it does to you. Like, if my perception of grass was actually purple or something, and yours was red, but since grass is green, we both call what we see green. I don’t know if that makes sense, and I assure you I’m not high, it’s just something that I’ve pondered over in the past…
Posted on 12-Mar-07 at 4:08 pm | Permalink
Emma wrote:
NO WAY, Emma! I totally think about that EXACT SAME THING. Wierd.
Also, the bit that I understood of that, Patrick, was pretty cool and interesting!
Posted on 12-Mar-07 at 4:38 pm | Permalink
Patrick wrote:
katie – yeah the study found that in general if the language has more color categories it remember and emphasizes color difference my drastically. What I found interesting was the fact that the study was one one had very relativistic but on the other hand universal. Also, Humans can feel electrical fields too, but maybe not as precisely as sharks. I thought it was interesting
Emma- yeah the way that they deal with that is not trying to describe green (beyond wavelength numbers) but define two colors as equal if people can’t tell the difference between them.
Posted on 12-Mar-07 at 4:42 pm | Permalink
Sam wrote:
My favorite color is blue.
Posted on 12-Mar-07 at 5:00 pm | Permalink
patrick wrote:
I just realized there are several way to describe color space and if anyone cares I was referencing the CIE 1931 color space which is the only one that is formally encompasses all colors humans can see. The Color wheel that is normally taught is an additive RGB color space that cannot represent every color we can see but is good enough for most purposes.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 1:10 am | Permalink
Bill wrote:
Emmas: I think about that too, because I think that would be totally awesome. Can you imagine all the arguments that would get started if we realized it was actually true though? If we got to see color through someone else and found out the truth; I think wars would be started over it.
I’m also really interested in how other people see color. I’m taking Drawing 2: COLOR this semester and we’re applying color theory to our drawings/paintings. My problem is that I don’t see color that well and I have a lot of trouble mixing colors. After trying to recreate a Euan Uglow painting I realized how many different colors and infinite values of color can be within an object that appears to be only one color. Like seeing green in a shadow when it seems like there shouldn’t be green there at all.
I also think it’s weird to hate or love a certain color. I feel as a kid I loved bright colors and purple was my favorite color. Then as I grew older I favored simple, dull color combinations, like dark green, brown, and grey and I hated bright, vibrant colors. Now I feel totally opposite that again and I really appreciate color. Seeing certain colors next to each other can be totally exciting for some reason, and I’ve never felt that before. I painted something earlier that had an deep aqua color on top of a dull magenta and I thought it was an amazing relationship. In the past I would have never tried that. I guess what I’m saying is: seeing color has a lot to do with our experiences; right now I hate purple, but I’m learning to see it again differently. LONGESTCOMMENTEVERTHEEND.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 1:33 am | Permalink
Bill wrote:
I think I said ‘color’ about fifty million times in that comment, and only a number that outrageous could possibly be true.
Posted on 13-Mar-07 at 1:35 am | Permalink