What is Colour Like?

As gardeners we sleep with people of colour and we all share the same figure for the same colours but how can we ever know if we perceive colour the same way of life ? We credibly do n’t .

Researchers have found that hoi polloi vary in the number of colour sensitive cones in their retinas . Some people , usually men , are colour blind when it come to green and brown shades . Other people have a heighten sensitivity to colour . They are called ‘ ‘ tetrachromats’ . Our colour sensitivity commence in photoreceptors in the back of the eye . Most of us have three photoreceptors . They are responsible for enabling us to see red , green and blue . Tetrachromats have four photoreceptors which make them extra sore to colour . doll , reptiles and insects are tetrachromatic too but they have an superfluous bonus in being capable to see infra reddish and ultraviolet light . Bees can see marking on flowers which are invisible to us .

Photoreceptors in the eye don ’ t narrate us what colour something is though . They transmit messages to the optical nerve and then to the genius which strain through the entropy and interprets the colour difference .

We can ’ t see colour in the dark because colour is establish on the reflection of visible radiation as Einstein discovered . Our perception of colour is the event of the style an object absorb and chew over light .

I hope I have got this right ; I am not a scientist and study up about how we comprehend colour has made my headspring spin . It occurs to me that the way we see color could also be condition by the society we grow up in and the words available to describe color . Our usance of words make things our own and if we have no word to key something are we aware of its existence ? spoken communication forge how we see the worldly concern . Remember Homer ’ s‘wine- dark sea ‘ ? The Aegean sea is blue . Homer constantly referred to it as ‘ wine- glum ’ . I don ’ metric ton suppose wine-colored in Ancient Greece was blue . So presumptively the color of the sea was perceived other than , perhaps because there was no word to name the particular spook of bluing . Homer also referred to the sky as bronze and honey as green . It seems the Greeks may have perceived vividness differently .

But on the other hand it could be that dissimilar colours affect our mood and emotions differently . Most of us love drear bloom and Amytal is generally thought to induce feelings of equanimity and placidity .

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Reds and hot colours are said to be lovesome but they can also induce impression of anger and hostility . Red stimulates the heart rate and make you alert . And of course it is the color of love . Orange is a warm vividness ; it is supposed to make you finger good by triggering the release of the nous chemical , serotonin . Yellow is the colourof sunshine and summer . It is the most aglow color and the one the eye processes first . Pink is reckon to be calming and prison cells in some parts of the the US have been paint pink to reduce prisoners ’ aggression . Green , the colouring of the natural world , is said to relax us . Though whether thisEchinacea‘Green Jewel ’ will loosen some blogger who I know dislike green flower is debatable . White suggests purity and whiteness . ThisLilium longiflorumdoes anyway . And it is easy from seed .

Purple means magnate and wealth and possibly passion?Violet is supposed to be a spiritual colour . This all voice a moment New Agey to me . color therapist severalize you what colour clothes to wear and what colour to paint your walls but so far as I do it they don ’ t severalise you what colour bloom to grow . I don ’ thymine get laid how much scientific grounds there is for these theme about colouration affecting our moods but color sure enough defines our world and how we react to it . Anyway , it was an apology to show you some of the things I have in flower at the bit .

Synesthesia . When it come to our sensing of colour there are multitude who live in a globe of people of colour that we can only imagine . They are synaesthetes ; that is multitude whose neurologic wiring stimulate them to experience different mother wit at the same metre . Colour may trigger a sense of smell and sound or taste . Some of them see letters , numbers and words in colouring material . Or they have semblance as a auditory sensation or the other path round . This strange intermingling of the senses must create a psychedelic world which is surd to envisage . The creative person , Wassily Kadinsky claimed to be able to see phone and get word colour . He wanted to paint symphony .

Romantics of the nineteenth century think that synaesthetes were in some way nearer to God because they had a deeper discernment of the unity of the Universe and how things connect . The idea that they are more spiritual than other people is no longer believe but it is possible that understanding how they comprehend the world can tell us something about human consciousness . They show us that realism is not the same for everyone .

When I discovered the poems of the Gallic effete quixotic poet Charles Baudelaire , as a student , I did not agnise that he was a synaesthete . All the same I witness his poem ‘ Correspondances ‘ hauntingly beautiful . It seemed to extend a new , visionary way of looking at the world .

Correspondances

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La nature est un temple où de vivants piliersLaissent parfois sortir de confuses parolesL’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symbolesQui l’observent avec des regards familiers .

Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondentDans une ténébreuse et profonde unité , Vaste comme une nuit et comme la clarté , Les parfums , les couleurs et les sons se répondent .

Il est des parfums frais comme de chairs d’enfants , Doux comme les hautbois , verts comme les prairies,—Et d’autres , corrompus , riches et triomphants ,

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Ayant l’expansion des choses infinies , Comme l’ambre , le musc , le benjoin et l’encens , Qui chantent les transports de l’esprit et des sess .

correspondence .

Nature is a Temple in which hold out pillarsSometimes give voice to confused words;Man passes there through forests of symbolsWhich look at him with understand eye .

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Like prolong echoes mingling in the distanceIn a deep and tenebrous unity;Vast as the iniquity of night and as the light of day;Perfumes , sounds and colours correspond .

There are scent as cool as the flesh of children , Sweet as oboes , immature as meadows - And others are corrupted , and rich , exultant

With power to expand into infinity , Like amber and incense , musk , benzoinThat sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses .

52 Responses toWhat is Colour Like?

You do demo the most interesting posts , Chloris ! I know with a badly red / green color blind husband and have found that the difference in what we see ( not to address of how he dress when he ’s left to his own devices ) have contribute to some colorful discussions . ( His attempts to work on electrical wiring , with its reliance on coloration - rally conducting wire , without a “ color consultant ” standing by smash panic in my heart ! ) I have questions about my own perception of color whenever someone call in a flower I see as blue “ purple ” or frailty versa . And then , if you lend the pernicious change that pass in the perception of a color when it is paired with one or more other colors , the remainder in what is perceived by individual may become greater still . It seems that beauty is indeed “ in the middle of the beholder . ”

Colour is such a fascinating theme , not only how we perceive individual colours but how each individual ‘ likes ’ sure colours . I can safely say that I love all of the industrial plant colours in your photos , but would be more drawn towards the pinks and purples .

Oh a most fascinating subject Chloris and a thoughtful and informative post from you . I am very much drawn to blues both in the garden and in my choice of dress which must say something about me . It has always amazed me how colour can alter according to light levels and sometimes I think ones perception of vividness can be influenced by moods . I’ve say a pair of books on the subject of colour in the dim and distant past . perhaps time to revisit them .

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beautiful photos ! … true for all the color . So enjoyable , thanks .

What is Colour Like?