I have studied Ancient Hebrew and Classical Greek in Under Grad and Grad School. I really always struggle with this idea that they didn't see blue. They just described different aspects of things based on their world view. For instance the sky was a solid object that was made of a highly reflexive bronze. That bronze isn't blue wasn't the issue it was the so called shine.
The people were much more physical in their writing styles. Take "Apple of my eye." That was an ancient terms. It means that when you look closely at an apple you see your own eyes' reflections. It meant that they keep their eyes close to you.
This still supports your argument, but the wikipedia entry has a different meaning of the phrase "Apple of my eye".
From the wiki entry[0]: "Its meaning does indeed derive from an expression signifying the pupil of the eye, one of the most sensitive parts of the body. For example, one can tolerate an eyelash on the white of his eye, but let it barely touch the pupil, and everything else is of secondary importance."
It's kind of funny though, I always assumed it was like saying, "out of all the apples around me, you're the one that I notice, the one apple I see with my eye". And all of these definitions kind of hint at the same point. Definitely a misunderstood quote.
It might also be some quirk of literary culture or a reflection of the paucity of our sources. We know Greeks painted their sculptures, quite brightly, according to some reconstructions. This suggests they must have had some way to communicate about quite a few colours.
>The common view today is that white light is colourless and arises from the sum of all the hues of the spectrum, whereas black is its absence.
Pet peeve: white is itself a color experience. It's not colorless.
The infinite basis that forms the spectrum is different from the basis of three cones (receptive to bands of long, medium, and short wavelengths respectively), which itself is different from the basis formed by color opponencies (white/black, red/green, blue/yellow). Since the projections that go from one of these spaces to the next are not 1:1, to speak precisely we should not identify a spectrum with a color experience. (And, of course, because of other complications that this skips over like lateral inhibition and habituation.)
Physics talks about spectra and wavelengths. Retinas talk certain bands of wavelengths. Only brains talk color. The spectra that usually make brains experience white can be separated into spectra that make brains experience other color experiences.
> Pet peeve: white is itself a color experience. It's not colorless.
The way that I thought about color before being educated in the properties of light was to think of white as colorless. It's the thing that's easiest to add color to in a subtractive color model (e.g. using crayons paints as a child). It doesn't represent my science-based understanding, but I wouldn't be surprised to observe someone looking at something white and saying "Huh, it needs some color".
To expand on your point, retinas talk a limited number of overlapping spectral responses. That's why we can have an essentially identical perception of spectral yellow and a mix of red and green light.
Why would it look "wine dark", whatever that means, and not green? If other cultures describe blues as just different shades of green, why would Homer describe it as red - or maybe black?
Also, if the literal translation is actually "wine face sea", not "wine dark sea" [1], are we really sure we have any idea what this means?
I don't understand why people think "wine-dark" could mean "purple".
Just parse it like normal. This grammatical construction means "as dark as wine"... blue green and red things can all be dark or light.
Besides, can you think of a dark blue liquid the ancient Greeks would have access to? Wine is pretty much the closest thing to a black liquid they'd have laying around the house.
So basically the greeks didn't cleanly separate hue from the other aspects of the surface appearance of things. So that if something was glimmering, or dark, that was considered to be as important or more important than the hue, for the purposes of description.
In Japanese, "青" (ao) traditionally covered certain shades of both blue and green (blue sky, blue traffic lights, blue apples and many other plants).
"緑" (midori) is more solidly green, coming from a root word used to describe flourishing trees. I think that it's still considered a shade of ao. They'll sometimes use a phonetic rendering of English "green", and I'm not really clear on the difference in meaning there.
Yes, that was an entertaining book. Some of the interesting things I remember (and I might not remember them exactly correctly):
- Most languages developed a word for the color red before any other colors. Probably because blood is red and uniquely present at the most dramatic times of life.
- Blue is rarely seen in nature, and so many cultures wouldn't feel the need to distinguish between purple and blue, because neither was seen very often. There is one obvious exception though, the blue sky. Although anecdotal, the author used some precious scientific equipment, his daughter, to perform an experiment. He purposely avoiding telling his daughter the color of the sky, yet taught her the color of many physical objects. Once he was sure she knew all the colors he finally popped the question on a clear day: "What color is the sky?" His daughter seemed confused and eventually decided that the sky was white.
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The greek language is not dead, it is still spoken by about 15 mil. people worldwide. "Porfyro" is the deep red color that can be frequently experienced in esp. greek orthodox churches (even in apparell dating many hundreds of years), and "Glauco" is the shiny blue of the aegean sea that made the greek islands famous worldwide.
The words that the greeks used (and still use) have the purpose of describing the natural world, not of scientificaly defining colors according to a theory of vision.
Even the modern theory of color vision acknowledges the principles of color constancy and color adaptation.
If the Greeks saw colors completely differently than we modern Westerners do, then their artistic representations of color, like in frescos and painted pottery, would look quite bizarre to us. Is that the case?
No, since they produced representative art (not abstract art as far as we can tell) they tried to make water watery and the sky sky-y.
Yes, since language reflects which paints we pick up, and you can see this from greek sculpture (the victorians didn't manage to get all the color off all the sculpture): their color choices were more garish than we would use today. In fact their color choices are closer to those of hound sculpture. And note that the bronze-age aryan invaders to India and Persia also invaded Greece at the same time...
In other words, "yes, but not as much as you might think"
Text really isn't the best medium to discuss color perception. This Vox video summarizing the research of linguistic anthropologists is much more clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg
[+] [-] baldfat|8 years ago|reply
The people were much more physical in their writing styles. Take "Apple of my eye." That was an ancient terms. It means that when you look closely at an apple you see your own eyes' reflections. It meant that they keep their eyes close to you.
[+] [-] DarkTree|8 years ago|reply
From the wiki entry[0]: "Its meaning does indeed derive from an expression signifying the pupil of the eye, one of the most sensitive parts of the body. For example, one can tolerate an eyelash on the white of his eye, but let it barely touch the pupil, and everything else is of secondary importance."
It's kind of funny though, I always assumed it was like saying, "out of all the apples around me, you're the one that I notice, the one apple I see with my eye". And all of these definitions kind of hint at the same point. Definitely a misunderstood quote.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_of_my_eye
[+] [-] ty_a|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahern|8 years ago|reply
And I doubt it's a coincidence that blue, green, and yellow are adjacent on the spectrum.
[+] [-] jpfed|8 years ago|reply
Pet peeve: white is itself a color experience. It's not colorless.
The infinite basis that forms the spectrum is different from the basis of three cones (receptive to bands of long, medium, and short wavelengths respectively), which itself is different from the basis formed by color opponencies (white/black, red/green, blue/yellow). Since the projections that go from one of these spaces to the next are not 1:1, to speak precisely we should not identify a spectrum with a color experience. (And, of course, because of other complications that this skips over like lateral inhibition and habituation.)
Physics talks about spectra and wavelengths. Retinas talk certain bands of wavelengths. Only brains talk color. The spectra that usually make brains experience white can be separated into spectra that make brains experience other color experiences.
[+] [-] khedoros1|8 years ago|reply
The way that I thought about color before being educated in the properties of light was to think of white as colorless. It's the thing that's easiest to add color to in a subtractive color model (e.g. using crayons paints as a child). It doesn't represent my science-based understanding, but I wouldn't be surprised to observe someone looking at something white and saying "Huh, it needs some color".
[+] [-] mhalle|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cryptid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsxwolf|8 years ago|reply
Also, if the literal translation is actually "wine face sea", not "wine dark sea" [1], are we really sure we have any idea what this means?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_dark_sea_(Homer)
[+] [-] SerLava|8 years ago|reply
Just parse it like normal. This grammatical construction means "as dark as wine"... blue green and red things can all be dark or light.
Besides, can you think of a dark blue liquid the ancient Greeks would have access to? Wine is pretty much the closest thing to a black liquid they'd have laying around the house.
[+] [-] empath75|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huac|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khedoros1|8 years ago|reply
"緑" (midori) is more solidly green, coming from a root word used to describe flourishing trees. I think that it's still considered a shade of ao. They'll sometimes use a phonetic rendering of English "green", and I'm not really clear on the difference in meaning there.
[+] [-] emodendroket|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Buttons840|8 years ago|reply
- Most languages developed a word for the color red before any other colors. Probably because blood is red and uniquely present at the most dramatic times of life.
- Blue is rarely seen in nature, and so many cultures wouldn't feel the need to distinguish between purple and blue, because neither was seen very often. There is one obvious exception though, the blue sky. Although anecdotal, the author used some precious scientific equipment, his daughter, to perform an experiment. He purposely avoiding telling his daughter the color of the sky, yet taught her the color of many physical objects. Once he was sure she knew all the colors he finally popped the question on a clear day: "What color is the sky?" His daughter seemed confused and eventually decided that the sky was white.
[+] [-] edw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scentoni|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Qworg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giorgosts|8 years ago|reply
The words that the greeks used (and still use) have the purpose of describing the natural world, not of scientificaly defining colors according to a theory of vision.
Even the modern theory of color vision acknowledges the principles of color constancy and color adaptation.
[+] [-] woodandsteel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|8 years ago|reply
Yes, since language reflects which paints we pick up, and you can see this from greek sculpture (the victorians didn't manage to get all the color off all the sculpture): their color choices were more garish than we would use today. In fact their color choices are closer to those of hound sculpture. And note that the bronze-age aryan invaders to India and Persia also invaded Greece at the same time...
In other words, "yes, but not as much as you might think"
[+] [-] sn9|8 years ago|reply