Despite what your eyes see or your brain thinks you see, we live on a colorless, monochrome planet. It’s the one we call Earth that is hurtling through space chasing after the Sun and its life-giving light.
Where we think we see a world full of colors there are only rays of pale, almost invisible light that are absorbed or reflected by objects and surfaces. The only thing our eyes can see is light or its absence, which is darkness. Light is rays of solar energy moving at millions of protons per millisecond across an electromagnetic spectrum at variable wavelengths. When the slower wavelengths are reflected or absorbed by an object we see purple, blue and green colors. When the wavelengths move faster we see yellow, orange and red. (It’s more complicated than that, but we’ll leave it at that for now, OK?)
Our eyes can only decipher a tiny sliver (0.0035 percent) of the full electromagnetic spectrum of sunrays. We cannot see ultraviolet rays or x-rays, gamma rays or cosmic rays but some animals can see more of the light spectrum than we can. We can’t see microwaves or radio waves but we know they are there.
Magic eyeballs
The human eye is a physiological and biological miracle. It is comprised of six million cone cells and 110 million rod cells that all detect light in various states. The sensory signals our eyes transmit to our brains create a grand illusion we call our reality, our world and our universe. It is said that the human eye can detect 10 million different colors.
We know when are looking at all the colors of a rainbow in the sky that we are actually looking at neutral light that is being reflected, absorbed and refactored by invisible moisture drops. And, we all know about the trick with a triangular clear prism that can break up light into its spectrum of colors and wavelengths. (Thank you, Sir Isaac Newton.)
Aren’t you glad that your eyes and brain have been tricking you all these years to see a wonderful world full of red roses, green forests, blue skies, yellow daffodils, purple wine, orange flames and the many hues of our natural landscapes? How dull would our lives be without all the artists who have captured all this resplendent wonder on canvases and other works of art? We’re relieved to find out that color blindness in people is fairly rare and always just partial.
Whoa, wait just a minute. What about all those movies in Technicolor? Is all that color fake, too? How did someone invent color film after a century of just black and white? There must be a big industry all about making the correct chemistry for paints, film, digital pixels, textiles, lipstick, crayons, cars and our rainbow of plastics.
All we know is, if we had to live in just a black-and-white world we’d hang on to Charlie Chaplin’s silent movies, the exquisite photographs of Ansel Adams, the serenity and rhythms of Zen-inspired brush strokes and the rarified truths told in black ink on white paper.
Nowadays, only grandparents can remember the days without color television. The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, JFK’s assassination footage in 1963, the jungle battles from Vietnam and the comedy of “All in the Family” and “Mary Tyler Moore.” Can you imagine any of those in color? We can’t.
Feelings
Color is a very emotional topic and involves lots of psychology. None of us see the same reflected or absorbed light (colors) the same way. Besides our eyeballs and physical vision being different, we attach memories, feelings and personal meanings to the various hues of the visible palette.
Some colors are considered “calming” and some are summoned to create excitement, rage or passion. Interior decorators and others make a big living matching colors, settings and moods.
Haven’t we all “felt blue” but also have been so mad that all we can do is “see red?” We call some colors “cool” and others “hot.” And we attach all kinds of emotions to them such as being “green with envy” or admitting to a “purple passion.”
Who hasn’t told a “white lie” or been caught in a “black rage?” And, sacrebleu, what do we do with the color pink?
Different colors stand for different symbols or meanings and some have long histories we haven’t delved into very much.
The first color used by humans was a red earthen stain (ocher) that cavemen used in their cave paintings. There was a real breakthrough when a later civilization discovered how to render a pigment from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. It was a blue tone made into ultramarine violet oils and ink by the Egyptians and cobalt blue by the Chinese. Blue was a dominant color used in the Medieval Ages in cathedral windows and later as a companion color with white on fine porcelain.
In those times, the Virgin Mary was always cloaked in blue in paintings and figurines. Blue was considered the favorite color of the prophet Mohammed. And guess what? Blue is still the favorite color, by far, of most people when they are asked today.
Different colors have different cultural meanings that are almost accepted universally. Purple is associated with justice, royalty and sometimes mystery. Blue is a strong color that many use to stand for trust, purpose and truth. Green, besides coloring envy, is a reference to luck, nature and harmony. Yellow is a fun color that is a favorite of many children. Orange is full of mixed emotions and enthusiasm. We all know about red and sit in front of it a lot at stoplights. Red is also our Valentine’s color and a stand-in for passion. We’d just as soon leave pink off this list but it is used a lot to connote femininity and softness. We don’t want to risk upsetting anyone who favors pink, so there you are.
Oh, we almost forgot; white is used as a symbol of purity and in our highest religious ceremonies including weddings, Buddhist funerals and all around the Catholic Vatican. And, we all know about black, so let’s not go there, OK?
Color in Nature
Color in nature is a fantastic subject full of wonderment, great variety and puzzles about Nature’s evolution. Just remember, no matter how brilliant a bird’s plumes may be or how dazzling the array of tropical fish species may be, all these creatures get their colors the same way inanimate objects do — by absorbing or reflecting sunlight.
Aha, that is unless they are among some of the rare living organisms that possess bioluminescence powers. We’re familiar with fireflies, of course, but there are deep ocean fish, some aquatic plants and rare fungi that also can glow in the dark. Bioluminescence is a chemical reaction that provides for a species to emit captured sunlight through special light-emitting pigments.
The story of color in nature is one of a long, long evolution where plants and animals have co-evolved to camouflage themselves, be sexually attractive for procreation, attract pollinators or adorn themselves in the best tones for adapting to their hot, cold or changing climate.
Still, some creatures just seem to act like “show offs,” like male peacocks, Mandrill monkeys, Royal Angelfish, Monarch butterflies, chameleon lizards and lots of spiders, too. And, that’s not mentioning any of the flower kingdom where blooms as varied as rainbows are not just confined to jungles or other exotic lands.
Several species of animals have more complex eyes and better color vision than humans. Most birds, honeybees and some reptiles can see ultraviolet light that we cannot see. But these same species cannot see all the red hues that we do. Our cats and dogs are somewhat colorblind and their vision of varied colors is somewhat muted. We know about these animals’ eyesight from some very elaborate laboratory experiments with cameras. After all, you can’t really ask a cat or dog what it sees, no matter how smart you think your own pet may be.
Manmade colors
As we noted above, the earliest use of color was in cave paintings where early man used minerals, charcoal and dead plant matter mixed with a paste or applied dry. Dry clays were also used and were named after the places they were found. That is how we still have colors today named Umbria and Siena after the Italian provinces. There is also an Egyptian blue made from a copper silicate of the region.
Other early civilizations used plant materials to make dyes and paints including from berries, nut hulls, roots, seeds and bark. Ground-up insects were made into a color ingredient and sometimes animal secretions were collected such as from some sea creatures and other animal glands.
The process of manufacturing synthetic pigments is quite old but has been greatly improved by modern chemistry, although you’d be surprised by how many paints, inks and dyes are still derived from the same natural sources that our ancient ancestors used.
So all this leaves us with only a few leftover questions about color such as why we have “blue” and “red” states or why a red carpet is a good thing but having a budget in the red is a bad thing. None of us really like “having the blues” and we’d all prefer to pass a test or challenge with “flying colors.”
But, let’s just admit it: some things are just always going to be stuck in a “gray area,” no matter how we might look at things.
— Rollie Atkinson
8-31-2024
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Your comment on color blindness made me think how lucky I am to be colorblind. All male medical school grads were drafted from 1966-70 for obvious reasons (Vietnam war). I was supposed to go there to a Battalion Aid Station, which would be frontline. But I had to take a color blindness test. Fortunately I failed, and instead was sent for 2 years to Bangkok where I could get married, live with Cathy and enjoy life. All my fellow interns were sent to Vietnam and one died there.
If I had known that failing the color blindness test would have kept me out of Vietnam I would have faked it. But I didn’t need to! A lucky man to be affected by color blindness!
Dave Anderson MD