Deconstructing the Rainbow
DECONSTRUCTING THE RAINBOW
Where does one colour end and another begin?
Eleanor Maclure
Introduction
Many of us become aware of the limits of our language when we encounter hues that lie on the boundaries of our basic colour terms. Where does blue end and purple begin? How do we make that distinction? The spectrum of light we are able to see as colour may be limited by the capabilities of the human visual system in one sense, but the wavelengths of light that we do see can be endlessly divided. That we only identify seven colours in a rainbow is due to the fact the Isaac Newton believed colour should reflect the structures of music and related it to number of notes in a major scale. Where we draw the boundaries of our colour categories is incredibly influential. They reflect what is important and relevant in a particular culture and can reveal certain things about its way of life. It can even affect how well we are able to perceive colours, as they are easier to distinguish if we can put a name to them. Even though our colour vision’s optimum sensitivity is for the green-yellow part of the spectrum, we have particular difficulty articulating the colours that lie in that area, because we have no commonly used colour terms to describe them in English. This is in contrast to the area between blue and green, which we readily label ‘turquoise’. The fact that colour is a continuum becomes especially apparent when viewing gradients. The smooth transition of one colour to another is a perfect illustration of the true nature of colour, and the artifice of our collectively imposed colour categories. By breaking down gradients into varying numbers of steps, we can appreciate the structure of a colour shift and the subtleties of how one colour translates into another.
Analysing gradients cannot provide us with any additional names for colours or tell us what to call the area in between red and purple. However, they can help us to have a better understanding of our colour terms and identify where the changes occur between colours. This book examines the continuous nature of our colour spectrum and how we divide it, through gradients, gradient analysis and writing - including quotes from a number of influential texts on the subject. The title of this book is not only a reference to the subject matter but to Colour for Philosophers, Unweaving the Rainbow by C L Hardin.
Deconstructing the Rainbow
Colour as a Continuum
“Colour may be a continuum, but the continuum is continuously broken, the indivisible is endlessly divided.� Batchelor (2000, pp.85)
“If colour is indivisible, a continuum, what sense can there be in talking of colours? None, obviously... except that we do it all the time.� Batchelor (2000, pp.86)
“What does it mean to divide colour into colours? Where do the divisions occur? Is it possible that these divisions are somehow internal to colour, that they form a part of the nature of colour? Or are they imposed on colour by conventions of language and culture?� Batchelor (2000, pp.85)
Our colour vision is most sensitive to light in the yellow-green part of the spectrum.
Where does green end and blue begin? And how would we know if we were right?
Although our colour spectrum is limited by the range of light waves that we are able see, there are potentially an infinite number of divisions between colours.
‘“Colour has not yet been named’, said Derrida. Perhaps not, but some colours have. We have colour names, and so we have colours.” Batchelor (2000, pp.87)
I do not think it is possible to found a system of communication on a subtle discrimination between colours too close to each other on the spectrum... we potentially have a great capacity for discrimination, and with ten million colours it would be interesting to compose a language more rich and powerful than the verbal one, based as it is upon no more than forty phonemes. Eco (1985, pp.174)
The way we divide the spectrum into colour categories reflects how pertinent those categories are to a culture.
Someone who is familiar with reddish-green should be in a position to produce a colour series which starts with red and ends in green and which perhaps even for us constitutes a continuous transition between the two. We would then discover that at the point where we always see the same shade, e.g. of brown, this person sometimes sees brown and sometimes see reddish green. Wittgenstein (1979, pp.3)
“Orange is red-yellow, and purple is red-blue, so that anything red would also have to be a yellow-blue, and nothing is yellow blue.� Hardin (1988, pp.xxi)
If reddish yellow is orange why is bluish yellow not green?
“Red, is not an orangish purple. Why not? The straightforward answer relies not on an appeal to conventions about color words but on an appeal to what colours are.� Hardin (1988, pp.xxi)
What happens to yellow as it travels towards green? And how distinct is green from yellow? More distinct than orange is from yellow and purple is from blue and from red? Probably, but then why don’t we have a name or names for the colour space between green and yellow? Batchelor (2000, pp.90)
Our discrimination ability for colours seems to be greater: we can detect the fact that hues gradually change in the continuum of a rainbow, though we have no means to categorise the borderlines between different colours. Eco (1985, pp.166)
Gradient Studies
SPECTRUM STUDIES
SEVEN DIVISIONS
SPECTRUM STUDIES
FOURTEEN DIVISIONS
SPECTRUM STUDIES
TWENTY-ONE DIVISIONS
SPECTRUM STUDIES
TWENTY-EIGHT DIVISIONS
SPECTRUM STUDIES
THIRTY-FIVE DIVISIONS
SPECTRUM STUDIES
FORTY-TWO DIVISIONS
SPECTRUM STUDIES
FORTY-NINE DIVISIONS
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES RED BECOME ORANGE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES RED BECOME ORANGE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES RED BECOME ORANGE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES RED BECOME ORANGE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES ORANGE BECOME YELLOW?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES ORANGE BECOME YELLOW?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES ORANGE BECOME YELLOW?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES ORANGE BECOME YELLOW?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES YELLOW BECOME GREEN?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES YELLOW BECOME GREEN?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES YELLOW BECOME GREEN?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES YELLOW BECOME GREEN?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES GREEN BECOME BLUE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES GREEN BECOME BLUE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES GREEN BECOME BLUE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES GREEN BECOME BLUE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES BLUE BECOME INDIGO?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES BLUE BECOME INDIGO?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES BLUE BECOME INDIGO?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES BLUE BECOME INDIGO?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES INDIGO BECOME VIOLET?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES INDIGO BECOME VIOLET?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES INDIGO BECOME VIOLET?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES INDIGO BECOME VIOLET?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES VIOLET BECOME MAGENTA?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES VIOLET BECOME MAGENTA?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES VIOLET BECOME MAGENTA?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES VIOLET BECOME MAGENTA?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES MAGENTA BECOME RED?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES MAGENTA BECOME RED?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES MAGENTA BECOME RED?
GRADIENT STUDIES
HOW DOES MAGENTA BECOME RED?
GRADIENT STUDIES
WHEN DOES RED BECOME ORANGE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
WHEN DOES ORANGE BECOME YELLOW?
GRADIENT STUDIES
WHEN DOES YELLOW BECOME GREEN?
GRADIENT STUDIES
WHEN DOES GREEN BECOME BLUE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
WHEN DOES BLUE BECOME INDIGO?
GRADIENT STUDIES
WHEN DOES INDIGO BECOME VIOLET?
GRADIENT STUDIES
WHEN DOES VIOLET BECOME MAGENTA?
GRADIENT STUDIES
WHEN DOES MAGENTA BECOME RED?
GRADIENT STUDIES
IS THIS RED OR ORANGE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
IS THIS ORANGE OR YELLOW?
GRADIENT STUDIES
IS THIS YELLOW OR GREEN?
GRADIENT STUDIES
IS THIS GREEN OR BLUE?
GRADIENT STUDIES
IS THIS BLUE OR INDIGO?
GRADIENT STUDIES
IS THIS INDIGO OR VIOLET?
GRADIENT STUDIES
IS THIS VIOLET OR MAGENTA?
GRADIENT STUDIES
IS THIS MAGENTA OR RED?
References
BATCHELOR, D., 2000. Chromaphobia. London: Reaktion. ECO, U., 1985. How culture conditions the colours we see. In: BLONSKY, M., ed. 1985. On signs. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp.157-175. HARDIN, C. L., 1988. Colour for philosophers. Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing Company. WITTGENSTEIN, L., 1979. Remarks on colour. Oxford : Blackwell.