One hundred years ago, it would have been appealing to have a mathematical model of color perception that scientists could work from. The problem, of course, is

One hundred years ago, it would have been appealing to have a mathematical model of color perception that scientists could work from. The problem, of course, is that the systems of perception within humans and other mammals are very complex. There are large differences in color perception between individuals and, I suspect, even between genetic groups. The visual system has many layers and a lot of neural processing goes on before we "see" what we are looking at. This system is not built out of a handful of components easily modeled by differential equations like an electronic circuit; it is built out of non-linear, stateful components (neurons) with at least millions of interconnects. A mathematical model that is intended to capture every nuance is bound to fail. At best, in my uninformed opinion, we could simply do subjective surveys of perceptual color response and encode the averages and differences between individuals within standardized tables. It would then be simple for applications to make use of these tables for making and measuring systems intended for human use. An illustration of the complexity of the visual system can be found in the wide range of visual illusions we are subject to, see [1] and [2]. Most of these are due to the visual system developing to interpret the visual world with very limited equipment, our human eyes. A purely mathematical model wouldn't be complete unless it too encompassed the strange optical illusions we all have. (I should point out that individuals have different responses to optical illusions.) [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/visual-illusion https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/visual-ill... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion