Topics Color

Question Can a new color be made that is not like, or mixed from, any other?

Accepted:
October 22, 2005

Comments

The answer to this question obviously depends upon what color is. and I haven't a clue. But there is a little we can say anyway. Let us ask: Could there be a color that human beings perceived that was utterly unlike any other? To this question, I think the answer is no. Human color perception, it is now pretty well-established, is tri-chromatic, which means that color-space, as humans perceive it, is three-dimensional, the three dimensions characterized by the primary colors. I suppose it is possible that there are some colors no one has ever perceived that would appear utterly unlike colors to which they were nonetheless chromatically related, but human color vision also appears to satisfy some kind of continuity principle that would rule out that possibility.

Some birds, it appears, have vision based upon four dimensions. If so, then the structure of color-space as they perceive it is radically unlike ours. Whether that means that there are colors they perceive that we do not, or whether it instead means that they see similarities that we do not, is much debated.

Question Can a new color be made that is not like, or mixed from, any other? Accepted:October 22, 2005

Question Can a new color be made that is not like, or mixed from, any other?

Accepted:
October 22, 2005