like as a physical property. i don’t know any color-ology maybe there’s a simple way to make me get it but
IT SEEMS like color depends entirely on BRIGHTNESS so an OBJECT can’t have a fixed COLOR because BRIGHTNESS changes all the time!
if there is a spectrum of color we can’t see, is it real?
We only perceive color the way we do because our eyes have evolved to pick up certain wavelengths
Color is not a constant even amongst humans, even excluding cultural and linguistic differences, you got various forms of color-blindness
It’s just one of those things where thinking about it starts to be really trippy after a while
okay so wavelengths are a thing… but are they consistent & measurable?
i.e. is a red bucket always emitting the same flavor wave? what kind of wave is brighter than others (or is it the number)
Yea I believe there’s a general band of frequencies that generally is described as red or whatever other color, as generally perceived by the human. (Bc ofc some of it can be cultural or subjective or even change depending on color blindness or other conditions)
You can find charts describing the ranges, eventually the visual range gives way to ultraviolet and so on.
There are ranges that we aren’t able to perceive but birds are.
If only we could see microwaves, we’d finally be able to catch the culprit behind Havanna syndrome
So, if you’re going from a pure “this is what we’ve measured” science standpoint, the visible spectrum begins past infrared where the wavelengths are too long for us to pick up
As they tighten up, we get the standard ROY G BIV stuff you probably got taught until they tighten up so much we can’t pick them up either, ending with ultraviolet
Everything there has a set of wavelengths that we pick up and perceive as those colors, it’s the human visual spectrum
But that’s only because our eyes evolved to pick those up
Other living things perceive that exact same spectrum wildly differently because their eyes evolved differently for them
It’s one of those things that I love because it keeps me up at night
The problem with that question is that “color” is multiple distinct things, some of which are physical or have discrete properties and others of which are entirely subjective or cultural. Like the actual color of an object, as in how it absorbs, refracts, and reflects light is a physical property of its surface and material. The color of light is a physical property of its wavelength, which can be altered by the medium it’s passing through. Your personal perception of color is internal and subjective. The concept of general blocks of color with names is entirely cultural.
it’s the wavelength of the photons that bounce off the surface of a thing, after some wavelengths have been absorbed. so like, green things aren’t ‘green’, the stuff they are made of reflects green. so no, ‘colour’ is not a physical property, but an emergent one on how light and matter interact which is dependant on a lot of things like brightness and the medium the light travels through and all sorts. and even then, the actual colour spectrum you and I see is entirely constructed by our brains and specifically how the human brain compiles that sensory information as something you and I understand
