Oh I have heard of that situation -- even had a friend with it; it's called synthesia. I don't want to get into an argument about it, but I think it's a disorder in brain wiring, or perceptions being recognized with areas of the brain usually reserved for other factors such as hearing sound. But the wavelengths themselves that make up color definitely are an intrinsic quality. How we perceive them is up to our brains. But you can use all types of objective instruments to read the angstrom ratings of color. If you check what we perceive as red, it will show up as 700 millimicrons. There is no way around it. We have agreed to call that frequency red. It is that frequency independent of your or my color sensitivity. It exists as an independent entity. I would never argue that everyone perceives colors the same -- what my brain thinks of as colors might be something else to yours -- but I do maintain that the colors are independent of our senses. They exist. Any eye or instrument able to focus light, and which is sensitive enough to distinguish among wavelengths, can agree that light streaming out of the Orion Nebula at 700 millimicrons is "red" or whatever other label creatures from another planet put on it. ________________________________ From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 2:43 PM Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Color perception (WAS: Re: Today's APOD: Infrared Horsehead) Joe, you've never heard of people who associate colors with sounds, or even certain numbers or printed text? It's a fascinating phenomenon, if you care to research it. I'm afraid that colors, as we perceive them, are not an intrinsic quality of a particular wavelength. I wouldn't discount the possibility that an alien race that evolved under a sun with the same color as ours, or very close to it, and with vision that is active over approximately the same wavelength range as ours, would probably perceive colors similarly to us. But another alien race, with vision sensitive above or below what we can see, might look at our sky and see something very, very different than what we call "blue". The rainbow would look very different to a race with microwave-sensitive vision, or vision sensitive to infra-red wavelengths. On this planet, we're all on the same page as to what "green" looks like, but to a race with spectral sensitivity different than ours, their "rainbow" would be composed of a pallet that we may not even be able to conceive of. It's a pretty cool idea, actually. Color perception is relative, not absolute or intrinsic to wavelength, except among beings with the same eye and brain mechanisms. There are even documented cases of human beings who's eyes are sensitive to a broader spectrum than the general population, due to a physiological difference in the retina. They see colors very differently than even their fellow human beings. There's a good argument right there that color association, or perception, isn't intrinsic to wavelength, and doesn't require "what ifs" or aliens spawned under a different colored sun. On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 12:09 PM, Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com>wrote:
Associating colors with sound, this one sounds like WOW! (Chuck, I don't disagree that colors are perceived by our brains, but I argue that whatever they are like, they exist independently of our brains in definable ways, as shown by our measurements. And we can represent these actual wavelengths by printed colors that we can identify visually.) -- Joe
------------------------------ On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 6:28 AM MDT Chuck Hards wrote:
Wow that is remarkable. I can't recall ever seeing the Horsehead in such detail. And good choice of colors on the part of the people who processed the image. Gives it quite a ghostly appearance.
I know Joe will disagree with me, but color only exists in the minds of some living creatures. It is our way of distinguishing different wavelengths of light energy. The colors you perceive mostly depends on the environment your ancestors evolved in. For the purposes of argument, I'm setting-aside singular mutations and those cases where, due to a difference in brain wiring (for whatever reason, injury or otherwise), some individuals percieve colors associated with sounds, for example, or shapes.
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