5 ms·
> It is surprising that these kind of categorical errors get forwarded so easily. This is usually a sign that it wasn't the article's author who misunderstood
by bildung 5y ago
> It is surprising that these kind of categorical errors get forwarded so easily.
This is usually a sign that it wasn't the article's author who misunderstood ;)
Physically, people obviously could see the same frequencies. But what to make of the raw perception has a cultural aspect - after all, the whole band from 400 nm to 780 nm is continuous, and we are able to perceive the complete range[0], so the color categories we use have to be arbitrary to a degree. So seeing here means consciously differentiating, not physically perceiving.
Anecdote: I was working in a print shop during university. After a few years of consciously comparing small hue differences, I became almost offended if someone in class talked about a "purple" line in a graph that was clearly magenta to me. I couldn't care less a few years before.
[0] = many parts indirectly, though, e.g. yellow is not a color we can see directly with the cones alone, it is processed first.
- Gravityloss 5y agoThat's just about caring or differentiating about relatively small difference. Not about not being able to see the whole color. Which is in the title. Recently a lot of people forwarded the idea that ancient people couldn't see blue. If you look at Egyptian artefacts, they sure have a lot of symmetrical blue accents. If they really couldn't see the color, then by accident they should have at least at times picked some other color to the left piece than the right piece?
- bildung 5y ago> That's just about caring or differentiating about relatively small difference. Which this is all about! The author talks about 51 Munsell color samples out of 1500, so only 3% of the gamut. Look how specific "violet" is in the Munsell system: https://munsell.com/color-blog/munsell-book-of-color-1929-traditional-color-names/ https://munsell.com/color-blog/munsell-book-of-color-1929-tr... (violet is at #17).
- Gravityloss 5y agoYes, the article itself is nice but the title isn't. "Why it took us thousands of years to see the colour violet". What do you make of plums in still life paintings? I don't know if it fills the criteria for violet. https://vsemart.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Peaches-and-plums.-Jacob-van-Hulsdonck.jpg https://vsemart.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Peaches-and-p...
- CRConrad 5y agoYes yes, but still: the title is pure idiocy.