A History of Color: The Evolution of Theories of Lights and Color

289 Pages·1999·4.64 MB·English

by  Robert A. Crone (auth.)

A HISTORY OF COLOR
ROBERT A. CRONE
A History of Color
The Evolution ofTheories of Lights and Color
Reprinted from Documenta Ophthalmologia, Volume 96, No. 1-3 (1999)
Kluwer Academic Publishers
DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crone, Robert A. (Robert Arnold)
A history of color the evolution af thearies of light and color
by Rabert A. Crane.
p. cm.
Adaptation of, Licht, kleur, ruimte I Rabert A. Crone.
Inc 1u des index.
1. Color--Histary. I. Crane, Rabert A. (Rabert Arnold). Licht,
kleur, ruimte. Ir. Title.
aC494.7.C76 1999
535.6·09--dc21 98-51580
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02-06-00-200 ts
ISBN 978-94-015-3941-8 ISBN 978-94-007-0870-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0870-9
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1999
All Rights Reserved
C 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers
Reprinted 2000
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
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Contents
Preface
Color theory in the ancient world 3
Empedocles' four elements and four colors 4
The four-color doctrine 5
Atomism and idealism: Democritus and Plato 6
The empiricism of Aristotle 8
The influence of Plato and Aristotle on science 11
The Hellenistic and Roman era 12
Neoplatonism 16
The end of ancient scholarship 16
" The Middle Ages 17
The early Middle Ages 17
The visual science of the Islamic world 19
The controversy about visual rays 20
Ibn AI-Haytham (Alhazen) 22
Alhazen's theory of vision 22
Colors 25
The refraction of light 26
The science of vision and colors in the prime of the Middle Ages 27
The perspectivists 30
'" The Renaissance 35
Color in the Renaissance 36
Optics in the Renaissance 39
Johannes Kepler 44
IV Light, color and vision during the scientific revolution 50
The scientific revolution 50
Kepler and Galileo 50
Bacon, Gassend and Descartes 51
Descartes and vision 54
New theories of light and color 58
The speed of light 64
The refraction of light 65
The rainbow 68
The chemical colors 71
The color theories of opponents of the corpuscular hypothesis 73
V Newton 77
A new theory of light and color 78
Newton's color system 83
The barycentric system 85
The physiology of color vision 86
VI From Newton to Young 88
The reception of Newton's color theory 90
Supporters of the medium hypothesis 91
Intermezzo: achromatic lenses 92
Supporters of the corpuscular hypothesis 93
Conservative Aristotelians 94
Practitioners on the classification of colors 98
Three-color printing 99
The first color triangles 100
Butterflies and color-tops 102
The start of color physiology 103
The retina sensitive to three sorts of light? 104
Thomas Young 106
Theory of light 107
Fresnel 108
Invisible light 108
Theory of color vision 110
VII Classical-romantic color theory in Germany 112
Runge 113
Goethe 115
Intermezzo: subjective colors before Goethe 119
Back to Goethe 120
Schopenhauer 121
VIII Disorders of color vision 126
Dalton 127
Goethe 130
Schopenhauer 131
Seebeck 132
IX The mixing of colors 133
Primary colors and the mixing of pigments 133
Optic color mixing 134
Wünsch 134
Chevreul 135
Voigt, Young and Forbes 135
Helmholtz 137
Mixing spectral colors 138
X The trichromatic theory 141
Helmholtz 142
Grassmann 143
Limitations of Grassmann's system 147
Maxwell 147
Colorimetry 149
The fundamental sensation curves 154
Trichromatism and dichromatism 156
Arthur König 158
Anomalous trichromatism 159
Psychophysics 160
Aubert and Mach: color as subjective quality 163
XI Hering's four-color theory Zone theories 165
Theory of the four opponent colors 166
Fick's hypothesis 170
Zone theories 171
XII Anatomy and physiology of the visual system between
1600 and 1900 175
Anatomy of the retina 175
The neural structure of the retina 178
Anatomy of the visual pathways 179
The duplicity theory 181
Day-blindness and night-blindness 183
Visual pigment 185
The Purkinje shift 186
The photopic luminous efficiency function (V lambda function) 187
Dark adaptation 189
XIII The twentieth century 191
The quantum theory 191
The impact of the quantum theory on the science of vision and
color 193
The physics of color 193
Photochemical processes 194
The quantum theory and the limits of vision 194
The absolute threshold of vision 194
The relative threshold of vision 195
The relative thresholds of color vision 196
Our spectral window and the quantum theory 197
Other important aspects of the twentieth century color theory 198
The further development öf color theories 199
The trichromatic theory 200
Luminance and color 202
Zone theories 205
Electronmicroscopy of the retina 209
New facts about color vision defects 212
Heredity 212
Tritanopia 213
Monochromatism 214
The visual pigments 214
The rod-pigment 214
The cone-pigments 215
Retinal densitometry 217
Cone histochemistry 219
Microspectrophotometry 219
The structure of the cone pigments 220
The evolution of color vision 222
The neurophysiology of the retina 223
Action potentials 224
The horseshoe crab 224
The visual nerve of the frog 225
The receptive field 226
Stimulation of the retinal ganglion cells with colored lights 227
Electrophysiology of the cones 228
Opponent processes '229
The advantages of an opponent organization 232
Color and luminance channels from retina to visual cortex 232
Color psychology in the twentieth century 233
The classification of colors 233
The names of colors 234
Contrast 236
The influence of boundaries 237
Color adaptation and color constancy 239
The cortical color mechanism 241
Functional specialization in the areas of the visual cortex 243
Appendix and synopsis; what is color? 247
Color and prescientific man 247
The history of color theory 248
Aristotle 248
Alhazen, Bacon, Kepler 248
Mechanicism and the subjectivity of the concept of color 249
From Newton to the trichromatic theory 249
Hering 250
Modern color ,physiology 251
The future of color science 251
Notes 253
ACknowledgments 261
References 261
Index 277
Documenta Ophthalmologica 96: 1-282, 1999.
© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Preface
The history of color theory can only be
understood in the context of the history of all
natural sciences. Because, for insight into the
smallest component, a comprehensive view
of the whole is necessary [1 J
Goethe, Farbenlehre
This book gives a survey of color theories between 500 BC and 2000 AD.
Naturally it cannot provide more than a broad outline. Goethe needed more
than 500 pages for the historical section of his Farbenlehre (1810). The Dutch
ophthalmologist Halbertsma compressed color history from 500 BC to 1950
AD into 270 pages (1949). In view of the numerous new discoveries in the
field of color which have been made in the second half of this century, I have
continued this history up to the year 2000, limiting mys elf in the last century
to the most important discoveries and theoretical developments. Rather than
an exhaustive encyclopedic treatment of the subject, I have chosen for a more
readable text, meant for everyone who is interested in color, vision and the
history of natural science. Specialized technical knowledge is not required.
The History of Color is an adaptation of my book Licht-Kleur-Ruimte (Light-
Color-Space) which was published in 1992 in Dutch. In that monograph I
included ophthalmo10gical subjects and a large chapter on spatia1 vision.
I have not touched on the pictorial and aesthetic aspects of color. In addi-
tion to the fact that I did not fee I qualified to do this, new books [2] on the
subject have been published recently, such as Colour and Culture by John
Gage. I have also 1eft the emotional effects of colors out of consideration.
Bearing in mind the quotation at the beginning of this preface, I have
described the his tory of color theory in relation to theories of light and vision
and, in a wider connection, in the context of the history of natural science. For
this reason, the word 'color' does not appear on every page. Up to 1600 there
is more happening in the field of visual theory than color theory. During the
scientific revolution the nature of light is the focus of attention. After Isaac
Newton, color becomes the main theme of this book; after Thomas Young,
color vision. It is not until the second half of the twentieth century that the
2
connection is made between color vision and the physiology of the nervous
system.
The book which aroused my interest in ancient ideas about vision was
Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler by David Lindberg. The M echan-
ization ofthe World Picture by EJ. Dijksterhuis was also an important source
of inspiration.
A broad path can be traced through the field of color theory which, not
without diversions, leads from Greek science to modem color physiology. In
every era sideroads were constructed, which sometimes connected to form a
broad path, but still came to a dead end. No theory ever arose spontaneously:
in all cases, I have tried to trace the path which led to a given hypothesis.
I am indebted to several friends for their comments: Wim Delleman, Henk
Spekreijse, Henk van der Tweel (t 1997), Pieter Stoutenbeek. My special
thanks go to Hans Vos for his detailed (and often merciless) criticism. I also
thank the translator Kathleen Boet-Herbert who always suggested the right
English term for a clumsy Dutch word. The Dr. F.P. Fischer Stichting gener-
ously provided the funds for the translation. My publisher, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, has helped me greatly with the editing of the manuscript.