The Way We Perceive Colours

Colours

Colours are something that most people interact with on a daily basis. As early as I can remember, colours were something that came naturally to me, the way I can tell red matches with orange and orange with yellow. I can also tell how yellow wouldn’t match purple. Colours are something that came from instinct, the way we could tell chromatic from non-chromatic, or complementary and analogous colours. It is something built into us for survival. 

Vision

Whilst in biology class, I learnt about cones and rods, receptors of light to interpret our surrounding reality into images. Rods operate using rhodopsin to interpret dim light into grayscale images for us. For example, in an almost completely dark room, you may see faint lights and surrounding objects and furniture as dark silhouettes of gently varying. Cones, the other light receptors that operate in bright light, have 3 distinct types in order to detect red, green, and blue, which is why colour blindness exists. An example would be cats, which perceive red and green as grey or muted tones.

Inverted spectrum theory

This leads me to my question — how are we able to affirm that people perceive colours the same way we do? What if your red is someone else’s orange? Or perhaps my green is another's pink? If our colours shift similarly (e.g., as I transition from red to orange, they may transition from green to blue), then our different perceptions of colour would be practically indistinguishable (dubbed the inverted spectrum theory). The idea actually came from a Ripley’s fact book, where they stated: “no two people see a rainbow the same way.” The mechanisms of this statement are technically different from the inverted spectrum theory I mentioned earlier, but it did give me the idea to write about it. The reason no two people see a rainbow the same way is that rainbows are an optical phenomenon, simply because it is formed from micro reflections in suspended droplets of water; thus, the refracted light will be perceived differently relative to the viewer’s position. Someone standing on my right or left will view different reflections of light and perhaps different intensities of refracted light. (National Geographic Society, 2023)

White-Gold or Blue-black dress? 

The dress. (2015). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FThe_dress&psig=AOvVaw0u94Sb1WHe_TF4pn9y6iC9&ust=1758632692825000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBgQjhxqFwoTCOjZobi37I8DFQAAAAAdAAAAABAe. 

The image above depicts a blue-black dress under convoluted lighting conditions. The lighting conditions caused people to perceive it differently, some viewing it as a white-gold dress in dark lighting whereas others viewed it as a blue-black dress in bright lighting. This is a good example of how people are able to view colours differently.

The inverted spectral theory is actually more of a philosophical problem. The reason I find it so interesting is because of my personal interest in art. In art, we refer to a select group of colours to be cold, and the opposing group to be warm. Cooler tones usually go towards blues, whilst warm tones go towards an orange hue. These hues play a part in how we perceive an image and what information it can give us about the surroundings. Cooler shadows will tell us that there is no strong/warm lighting in the background, whilst warmer shades in the shadows can tell us there is glare and strong lighting, as the bounce light (reflected light from nearby surfaces into shadows) reflects the light source.

Philosophy

 The reason why I personally believe the inverted spectrum problem to be false is because of our natural tendencies to categorise things into warm and cold. Another supporting example could be how certain cultures perceive blue and green to be one colour, just different tones, such as Japan (famous for their blue-green traffic lights). Different people will have different ways of perceiving colours and whilst there is no definitive conclusion supporting or contradicting the inverted spectrum theory, I personally believe that such a theory is either unlikely or occurs only on a smaller scale. Since it is more of a philosophical problem, what you choose to believe and why will differ from person to person.

References:

Akins, K. (2024). Dr. Kathleen Akins | Research. https://www.sfu.ca/~kathleea/Inverted%20Spectrum.html

National Geographic. (2023, October 19). Rainbow | National Geographic Society. Education.nationalgeographic.org; National Geographic. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/rainbow/