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Comment by bsoles

5 months ago

Not all people see colors the same. The section on "What is color?" could probably mention color blindness.

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bsoles

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Daub  5 months ago

Add to that the idea that some cultures have fewer color terms than others. This actually impacts upon their perception of color.

Check out "Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution" by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay.

  • moron4hire  5 months ago

    It does not affect perception. This is one of those early anthro/cogsci results that said more about the authors' cultural bias than it did about the people being studied, up there with "Eskimos have a thousand words for snow".

    It affects communication. People can still discern the difference between colors, they just don't have an easy way to communicate this difference to others.

    The Japanese language until relatively recently didn't have a clear verbal distinction between what we call green and blue in English. That doesn't mean Japanese people can't tell the difference between green and blue. It just means that there is a kind of "blue" that is the sky and a kind of "blue" that is for traffic control lights, and in context nobody is confused.

    The same issue can occur within a language between people with differing levels of study of color. A graphic designer might say a particular shade of green is "chartreuse" that his boss instead might call "yellowish green".