Concept
Color
Overview
characteristic of visual perception
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Color is discussed.
A certain amount of luminous intensity must exist in an object for its color to be discriminated at all. "In the dark all cats are gray." But the colors rapidly become distincter as the light increases, first the blues and last the reds and yellows, up to a certain point of intensity, when they grow indistinct again through the fact that each takes a turn towards white. At the highest bearable intensity of the light…
William James, Psychology
names the idea; opens on it
That color is visual is a proposition about color and it is a proposition which color itself does not utter. Visible or visual color is already a "synthetic" proposition, not a term nor an analysis of a single term.
John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
names the idea; states what it is
A first difficulty presents itself: consider a red color sensation affecting a certain point of the retina; and on the other hand a blue color sensation affecting the same point of the retina. It is necessary that we have some means of recognizing that these two sensations, qualitatively different, have something in common.
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
names the idea; opens on it
The eye doth not consider the figure and form, but the color of these drops; the first of which colors is a shining red, the second a purple, the third is blue and green. Let us consider whether the reason of this red shining color be the splendor of the sun falling upon these small drops, the whole body of light being refracted, by which this bright red color is produced; the second…
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
When impressions have been so often experienced in conjunction, that each of them calls up readily and instantaneously the ideas of the whole group, those ideas sometimes melt and coalesce into one another, and appear not several ideas, but one; in the same manner as, when the seven prismatic colors are presented to the eye in rapid succession, the sensation produced is that of white. But as in this last case it is…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
names the idea; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Color
Related ideas
- Isaac Newton
- Latin
- Light
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Heat
- Visual perception
- Qualia
- Synesthesia
- University of California Press
- Russian language
- James Clerk Maxwell
- Aristotle
- Hermann von Helmholtz
- Symmetry
- Wiley (publisher)
- MIT Press
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.