Visionaries
By Lucas Principe, Environmental Science and Philosophy, 2020
This piece was published as part of Issue 34: Color.
It is sometime in the mid-3rd century BCE. Aristotle, the most famous philosopher of his day, is strolling through the sunlight grove of the school he established, The Lyceum, discussing his ideas on a sensation we all experience everyday: color. From your frosty seat on the shaded white-marble stairs you can see him approaching, cloak whisking in the Mediterranean summer breeze, speaking with a friend. Luckily, you’re able to make out the poetry he’s weaving.
“My dear Herpyllis, it’s quite like this: as you know, the four basic elements are earth, water, fire, and air. And these elements don’t only exist in isolation, but as varying mixtures of each that make up all the matter in the world, including humans. The objects we see every day consist of varying proportions of these elements, which in turn produce the colors we perceive them to wear. All colors are, however, a mixture of light and darkness, black and white. Light and darkness then enter the eye at such a rapid speed that they aren’t perceived as just black and white, but as colors. This is because they are superimposed inside the eye. This creates the five fundamental colors: violet, green, blue, red, and yellow.”
You may find their beliefs archaic, but these are just a few of the philosophers and scientists who laid the groundwork for our modern color theories, along with so much more.
Suddenly, the olive trees and wine-dark Aegean sea of Ancient Greece have disappeared. You find yourself in a quiet, candlelit study furnished with dusty leather seats and a broad wooden desk. A primitive telescope sits in the corner. The year is now 1622 in a villa near Florence, Italy. Two men walk in, already so engaged in a discussion they don’t even notice you sitting in the corner. Closing the door for absolute privacy, they continue on with their conversation.
“You’ve already been condemned by the Church, Galileo. Must you publish another scientific work? You’re playing with fire each time you do.”
“This time it’s different, Virginio. I haven’t been thinking about the motion of celestial bodies lately, only the fundamental particles of life. You see, everything in this world is made up of tiny, indivisible particles, corpuscles I call them. The interactions of these corpuscles with our sensory perceivers create the five sensations we experience every day. Moreover, each corpuscle contains primary qualities, such as motion, size, shape, and location, which in turn give rise to secondary qualities in objects, like odor, sound, and color. Color, the most interesting of all, is nothing more than the tiny particles of light of varying number, shape, and size, coming from an object, which interact with our eyes in different manners, producing different shades. What’s more, I can then conclude that if we, the men who perceive these colors, were banished from existence, then colors wouldn’t exist at all.”
“So you’re saying that color only exists within the mind? and isn’t a property of the object itself?”
“Exactly.”
Without their contributions, our contemporary understanding of color may have never come about.
Once again, you find yourself lifted out of the engaging discussion you were comfortably eavesdropping on, only to be whisked away somewhere else. Wherever you are now, it’s dreary and cold. The sun is veiled by a thin layer of metallic clouds. It’s a rainy, wind-laden day on a busy street filled with pedestrians. Horses and carriages are dodging here and there to avoid colliding with each other on the rough cobblestones. It’s the mid-1660’s, in Cambridge, England. A young man in a long wool coat and high white stockings makes his way into the tavern you’re standing on the threshold of. Clearly in a hurry, he blows right by you and sits down with a fellow wearing similar attire.
“What have you come to share with me this time, Isaac?”
“Well, you see, Barrow, I’ve been running experiments with triangular prisms over the past few weeks. Quite a fascinating object. Interestingly enough, when you pass a ray of sunlight through it, that light breaks up into seven different colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. In my opinion, these seven colors are analogous to the seven notes of a musical octave. Each color corresponds to a note in the octave. What’s more, it’s my belief that these light rays are composed of tiny, indivisible particles and that each color has particles of different masses. These varying masses cause the colors to refract more or less when shone through the prism. For example, since red light refracts the least, and violet light refracts the most, then red light particles must be the most massive and violet light particles the least.”
You were captive on the edge of your seat listening to the great Isaac Newton, but now you unexpectedly find yourself lifted out of Stuart period England, back into your current time, reading the latest issue of NU Sci. More than two thousand years have just passed you by, yet only relatively recently have we started to understand the true, minute mechanics of color theory and the wave-particle duality of light.
However, what’s remarkable is the degree to which they were right. Each in their own regard developed a very competent color mechanism for their time.
You may find their beliefs archaic, but these are just a few of the philosophers and scientists who laid the groundwork for our modern color theories, along with so much more. Without their contributions, our contemporary understanding of color may have never come about. It’s no secret that each visionary was flawed in his own regard. For Aristotle, we know now that there are far more than four basic elements; and that color isn’t produced by the superimposition of dark and light in our eyes, but by the perception of different wavelengths of light by cone cells in the back of the eye. In regards to Galileo, it’s now clear that the world isn’t made up of tiny block-like, solid corpuscles ranging in shape and size, but by atoms composed of standardized protons, neutrons, and electrons. Likewise, Newton made the same mistake assuming light to be composed of particles. Not the conception of the particle-wave duality we hold today. However, what’s remarkable is the degree to which they were right. Each in their own regard developed a very competent color mechanism for their time. By applying their theories to ours, we realize that while the terminology may be different, the structure is somewhat similar. All three developed a mechanism for color that involves the eye absorbing and analyzing light. Furthermore, each of these theories provide that the microscopic properties of an object determine the color it displays. By looking at our modern understanding of color, it’s clear to see the influence these theories carry. The phrase “ahead of their time” is an understatement.
So, as we plunge forward into our bright future in this scientific golden age, we should always be cognizant of the past achievements that have brought us to this point. We must recognize that science is ultimately the process of building new ideas on a bedrock of timeworn ones, a gift each generation has granted to posterity.