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Hasn't this been established for long by references to antique color names (both Greek and Roman), as well as the representation of spectra in African languages

Hasn't this been established for long by references to antique color names (both Greek and Roman), as well as the representation of spectra in African languages? While the article makes reference to Greek semantics and anthropological findings, it still presents this as something new, where it should have emphasized the underlying theory.

adrian_b 3y ago
This essay should not have discussed anything about the names used for colors in various languages, because the number of color names that exist in a language has a very loose relationship with the psychological perception of colors, so it cannot be used to prove anything about the validity or invalidity of Hering's theory. In all languages, the circle of hues is partitioned in a number of regions, which have distinct names. The number of these regions varies from language to language, usually between two and eight. The value of this number has much less to do with the distinctiveness of the colors, than with the necessity of describing the colors of the objects that had a high probability of being subjects of conversation for the speakers of that language. Many languages have a single word for the colors green, blue-green and blue, just because there were no common objects for which it was necessary to specify whether they were green or blue. The too much repeated myth that the Ancient Greeks did not have a word for blue was created by people who might have known some linguistics, but who were ignorant about chemistry and mineralogy. There are plenty of dictionaries and commentaries about Ancient Greek literature which are very wrong about many words, because their authors did not understand what they have read, for lack of knowledge about the natural sciences. For instance, when Homer speaks about "miltos" used to paint some ships, you must understand that this word designates what is now called hematite or ferric oxide, which was processed as a red pigment. Or else when Plato speaks about the grains of diamond found together with alluvial gold, that has nothing to do with what is now named diamond (which became known to the Greeks only later, after the expeditions of Alexander the Great), but "diamond" was the name for nuggets of native osmium-iridium-ruthenium alloy. Understanding this meaning makes clear why Hesiod said several times that diamond is gray and why he considered it as a material from which a blade could be forged by someone with superhuman strength. There are many references to blue in Ancient Greek literature and the normal word that was used has been borrowed in English as "cyan". "Cyan" has never meant blue-green in Greek, but only plain blue. "Cyan" initially meant the color of the painting pigment that is now called "ultramarine blue", but later it was also used for the cheaper blue pigments Egyptian blue and azurite. An alternative way to refer to blue in Greek was as the "color of the air", which meant the color of the sky. In Latin, blue was normally called as the color of the sky, while the word used for green, "viridis" meant either green or blue-green. When these two colors had to be distinguished, the former was described as green like leaves or like grass or like emeralds, while the latter was described as green like the littoral sea or like turquoise or like beryls. Similarly, the word used for red in Latin (and also in Greek) meant either red or purple, and when the two colors had to be distinguished, the former was described as red like the dye extracted from beetles (crimson), while the latter was described as red like the dye extracted from marine snails.

adrian_b 3y ago

This essay should not have discussed anything about the names used for colors in various languages, because the number of color names that exist in a language has a very loose relationship with the psychological perception of colors, so it cannot be used to prove anything about the validity or invalidity of Hering's theory. In all languages, the circle of hues is partitioned in a number of regions, which have distinct names. The number of these regions varies from language to language, usually between two and eight. The value of this number has much less to do with the distinctiveness of the colors, than with the necessity of describing the colors of the objects that had a high probability of being subjects of conversation for the speakers of that language. Many languages have a single word for the colors green, blue-green and blue, just because there were no common objects for which it was necessary to specify whether they were green or blue. The too much repeated myth that the Ancient Greeks did not have a word for blue was created by people who might have known some linguistics, but who were ignorant about chemistry and mineralogy. There are plenty of dictionaries and commentaries about Ancient Greek literature which are very wrong about many words, because their authors did not understand what they have read, for lack of knowledge about the natural sciences. For instance, when Homer speaks about "miltos" used to paint some ships, you must understand that this word designates what is now called hematite or ferric oxide, which was processed as a red pigment. Or else when Plato speaks about the grains of diamond found together with alluvial gold, that has nothing to do with what is now named diamond (which became known to the Greeks only later, after the expeditions of Alexander the Great), but "diamond" was the name for nuggets of native osmium-iridium-ruthenium alloy. Understanding this meaning makes clear why Hesiod said several times that diamond is gray and why he considered it as a material from which a blade could be forged by someone with superhuman strength. There are many references to blue in Ancient Greek literature and the normal word that was used has been borrowed in English as "cyan". "Cyan" has never meant blue-green in Greek, but only plain blue. "Cyan" initially meant the color of the painting pigment that is now called "ultramarine blue", but later it was also used for the cheaper blue pigments Egyptian blue and azurite. An alternative way to refer to blue in Greek was as the "color of the air", which meant the color of the sky. In Latin, blue was normally called as the color of the sky, while the word used for green, "viridis" meant either green or blue-green. When these two colors had to be distinguished, the former was described as green like leaves or like grass or like emeralds, while the latter was described as green like the littoral sea or like turquoise or like beryls. Similarly, the word used for red in Latin (and also in Greek) meant either red or purple, and when the two colors had to be distinguished, the former was described as red like the dye extracted from beetles (crimson), while the latter was described as red like the dye extracted from marine snails.