The Nature of Color

The omnipresence of colors in everyday life has stimulated reflection from the beginning of philosophy. Reflections on color have often oscillated between objective and subjective interpretations. Especially since the experiments of Newton in the 1660s colors are regarded as objective realities, relating color to light. Each color has a specific length and frequency of electromagnetic waves. According to realist theories, colors are physical properties of material bodies and entities, and can be measured since they are written in the language of mathematics. Other scientific theories of color are based on neurophysiology. They emphasize perception: wavelengths of visible light are only colors when we see them. Colors are produced and constructed in the visual system and do not exist outside of perception. Neurophysiological theories thus provide an explanation of color in anatomical and physiological terms but they are subjective theories in the sense that color is not a property of objects in the outside world but completely perceived and produced within the perceiving subject. Objective as well as subjective interpretations have the same effect: they assign a particular location to color; it is either outside in the physical world or inside in our brains. Colors are regarded as sensations or perceptions rather than as experiences which relate objective and subjective elements. This last view is elaborated in the theory of phenomenological realism which regards color as a relational property. Colors have a reality in the phenomenal world which is partly independent of human perceivers, and it is also more than a private mental state in the perceivers. This relational theory is influenced by an ecological view of colors that attributes specific functions to perception: to detect certain characteristics of the environment that are useful for the survival of a species, and to discriminate between beneficial and harmful objects. According to this view, perception takes place at a pre-reflective level; it brings us into contact with the world that is prior to scientific knowledge; it is according to philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in contrast to knowing, a living communication with the world that makes it present to us as the familiar place of our life. In his view, a color is felt and the body is responding before we are even aware that we see it; it is touching and moving us.