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It's a common mistake thanks to people learning in school that the "primary colors" are red, yellow and blue but the explanation is mostly right otherwise: you
by hnbad 2y ago
It's a common mistake thanks to people learning in school that the "primary colors" are red, yellow and blue but the explanation is mostly right otherwise: you see cyan because it's a mix of blue and green, i.e. what you get when you subtract red from white light.
Of course human visual perception is a bit more complex than that but the primary mistake here is mixing up RGB and RYB. Quirks of color perception then result in referring to the resulting color as "green" when it clearly contains blue.
- jhbadger 2y agoAlso, the whole idea that "green" and "blue" are different things is culturally determined -- many languages either use one word that contains the shades English speakers call "blue" and "green" or did so historically before introducing separate words after they were influenced by English or other languages that make the distinction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction...
- KTibow 2y agoDoesn't the eye have distinct perceptors for green and blue, or am I missing something?
- jhbadger 2y agoNo. There are three types of cone cells (S, M, and L) that are most responsive to various wavelengths of light, but as the picture shows, most "colors" are within the high and low ranges of more than one type of cone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell
- jhbadger 2y agoFor those who downvoted this, did you read the wikipedia entry? Seriously, the idea that many languages don't make a blue/green distinction is a fact.
- jon_richards 2y agoThe classic example is Homer's "Wine-dark sea", but it gets a lot more complicated than that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...