Can You Describe a Color?
I was driving my bus this morning and I was amazed at how green the grass was in the fields and it got me to thinking about colors.
So here is a question for you. And it is driving me crazy.
How would you describe a color to someone that has never been able to see?
These people live in a world of darkness and only know black, the absence of color.
What words would you use?
I am interested to know what you think about this and if it is even possible to describe color.
Great question! Wow , that's going to make go nuts now..... Thank you for that my friend.lol
I know. I am wracking my brain over this!
Well I might need to think about that for a bit, but I can tell you we do not all see colours the same. I had a bike when I was a kid, I loved it because it was green, everyone else said it was yellow, I wasnt happy about that! No-one involved was colour blind, the paint was kind of fluorescent and just on the very edge of the yellow/green boundary, enough that we disagreed what colour it actually was.
Edit: OK I thought about your question, a person who has never seen would need some way to relate to the world, this could be sound or touch. I think sound is better as we can discern more subtle variations. Brightness of an object is like volume in sound, things can be very dull and they are hard to see, whereas some objects can be bright, so bright the light hurts your eyes, like loud sounds can hurt your ears. Colour itself is like the note, you can have very deep notes that you strain to hear, or very high notes that you strain to hear also, these are like infa-red and ultra-violet, they are both there and not there. In between is an infinite amount of colours, just like there are an infinite amount of tones of sound, but like notes in a musical scale, we roughly agree that groups of colours are in the same octave. But there is also huge subtlety, based on the surface of the object, whether it is smooth and shiny or rough, this can change the appearance of the colour too, just as a flute is a shiny sound and a snare drum can be rough. Just like sounds colours can make the seeing feel emotions, and great artists can mix colours like musicians mix sounds to convey meaning, with the accumulated visual experience being like an orchestra, the synergistic effect being greater than each instrument alone. When we look at the natural world, we see vivid and beautiful colours, the green grass is calm like the sound of an oboe playing gently, the sky and coulds being like the calls of the whales in the seas.
Ha ha reminds me of my youth actually
That is a very cool description! I think sound is the best choice.
I was thinking of smells but I think sound is more subtle!
I wonder what note green would be. I am not overly musical. maybe a G or F.
Yes, I have often wondered what other people see and how they see it.
Strange!