Neuroscience is fascinating to me, I wish I had time to pursue a degree in it. Color itself is just perception. Humans have only three color receptors and therefore the visible colors are limited by the combinatorial of those three. The external source of color is light which is continuum but light receptors are discrete (only light of a certain band will fit). The relative concentration of light that fills those bands is interpreted by our brains into gradation. TMK
@iMaDeMoN2012 Fine, but is it possible to imagine an invisible colour? If yes how could you describe it to me? Do animals which can perceive different colours imagine more colours or are the colours we can see the only colours which are imaginable by any brain and they have to parcel them out across a different range of frequencies? What we see as red is to most deep sea fish an invisible colour - infra yellow, a mythical colour beyond their perception, but could they imagine it as red?
Take a digital camera and point it at the lens of your TV remote while pressing any button on that remote. You'll see a purple-violet colour being emitted from the remote on the camera screen, but when looking directly at the remote you will see no light. What you see is ultraviolet light being relayed to you by the camera (which can detect ultraviolet) in the form of visible light at the highest visible frequency (violet)
@makkathran Aren't remote controls infrared not ultraviolet? Most old school video cameras can see very well in infrared so need filters to prevent unwanted effects, remove the filters and you can create cheap night vision equipment.
@MartinJWillett I was gonna type infrared, but put ultraviolet down because the light looked violet-ish. I knew it was either of the two, but yea, I guess ultraviolet lens may be problematic.
Human brains are more or less all the same in terms of what frequencies of light we can detect. The evolution of the eye meant our frequency range has broadened so we can detect frequencies in between the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums (a TINY fraction of all known frequencies). Frequencies that are not visible to us will have a 'colour', but we can not detect them because our eyes did not evolve that way.
@makkathran This has not addressed the issue of colour. We can only imagine colours that we can see. Is that because we can imagine all the colours that are imaginable and we parcel them out among the frequencies our eyes can actually detect? We know other colours exist, we know other animals can see them, but what colour do they see inside their brains? Is a bee's ultra violet simply our violet and our violet they see as blue or is bee purple a colour which can be imagined as a distinct colour?
@MartinJWillett So you're getting at the nature in which we perceive colour. If other animals perceive more or less colours than humans, then I would think, for example, 'human green' would appear different to them as the object reflecting green to us may also reflect ultraviolet, infrared, xray, radio, gamma , etc. Nearly everything reflects infrared. We can not perceive infrared, but if other animal can (in addition to visible light) then infrared would mix with other colours.
Different objects reflect certain frequencies of light, and absorb the rest. Charcoal absorbs nearly all frequencies in the visible light spectrum, which is why it is very 'black'. Some objects reflect nearly all frequencies of the visible light spectrum, which is why they are very 'white'. Colour is a phenomenon caused by the presence of light reflected by objects. Humans only receive a tiny proportion of all light frequencies, which is why we only see some reflected frequencies.
It's not exactly what you asked for, but there is a difference between colour from light and colour from pigmentation. They have different primaries and don't mix in the same way to produce secondary colours, and don't necessarily produce the same secondary colours when they do. Ultimately light mixes to produce white (because it's light) and pigments to produce a muddy brown (because they're pigments).
@abjectreality Yes, that's the easy stuff. It doesn't answer any of my questions. It's just the stuff that's easy to demonstrate with experiments so people who make out that they know everything about colour bang on about this stuff as if it contains significant answers. It doesn't explain why purple is produced by mixing red and blue rather than a dark shade of a colour of intermediate frequency as happens when red and yellow or yellow and blue are mixed. At least it doesn't to me.
But 'pigmented' colour is only visible because of how it absorbs light in the first place, and light colour has a different spectrum. Insects make use of colours we can't detect to find the right flowers to pollinate so it's of use to them, it's a part of the system in nature (like yellow usually meaning danger). What you're getting at is probably a subjective understanding of colour, and there's no answer for that.
@abjectreality When the snowdrops bloom just think about the colourful show that you can't see. It's obvious that a white flower that blooms at a time when most insects are too cold to fly probably isn't really white but as gaudy and bright in the near ultraviolet as daffodils are in their yellow hues.
It's lack of perception, colours beyond our ability to see. It's still a spectral occurrence, without light there is no colour for we couldn't see them.
You've hit upon something that is farther reaching than color perception. You've hinted at reality perception and how we interpret the reality we think we live in. It all comes down to the brain. (I usually eat my shrimp without thinking past the slightly pink color)....What color is a radio wave? A gamma ray? A manta ray... Would higher spacial dimensions have differing wavelengths of light? Could you "see" gravity waves? And why the hell is the Hulk green?
@mydogbanjo Gravity is not a wave. It is not at all related to the electromagnetic spectrum in the sense of visible perception. The Hulk's skin is green because it reflects the frequency (that we assign 'Green') and absorbs all other frequencies in the visible light spectrum!
@makkathran Ha ha....I'm jesting at the same time I'm commenting about interesting things. Actually the Hulk looks green for the reasons you stated but that doesn't explain why he turns green in the first place. And if you study some of the theoretical physics out there you would indeed begin to think that there may be gravity waves separate from the electromagnetic spectrum. Actually gravity is still a huge mystery and M-Theory explores it a wee bit! Cheers!
A better question, do all humans perceive green the same way? I say yes. Perception is not relative it's like television. It's an exact science. Our brains are built to produce a particular image, change the brain or the detectors, you change the image.
It appears only radiation, particularly electromagnetic radiation, is sensitive enough to be formed into images so any source of radiation or reflectors of radiation is visible and could have particular color given a detector.
@iMaDeMoN2012 Generally speaking you are right, however I'm color blind to some reds and greens so I would perceive them differently than someone who is not. A bats brain is wired for sonar location and my in fact "see" sound. It gets interesting when the brain starts to interpret one sense in a form normally associated with another sense. We know for instance that chemicals, (drugs), distort senses and the perception of time and space. An interesting topic for speculation!
Startin to sound an awful lot like a dope smoking lefty hippy martin. I would make a video response to this but it would quickly degrade into an attack on your masculinity, and I don't have any answer that the scientific community recognizes. or that make sense, or that aren't offensive.
Still hard not to enjoy the video. Sorry if i ruined your high on life buzz wasn't my intention, but i had to post that cause i found it funny.
A while back I saw a documentary on a couple British lasses who had a genetic mutation that gave them an additional receptor in their eyes that was a slightly different form of the green receptor. It allowed them to perceive shades of green we cannot.
When you look at platinum, silver, iridium, osmium what color do you see?
They all look the same....but not gold. Gold falls within our visual spectrum, but imagine if you had alien eyes and could perceive the UV the others reflect.
I should really read my comments befor I click post, this is a correction... unless you find a way for your rods pick up light or the pigments that they are not yet sensitive to I doubt we will ever see more colors than we can now. Sorry for the spam
I just have to add that it does make me hmm I don't think envious or jealous is the right word to use but something along those lines with a envious with a smile? maybe there is an english word I am lacking to express it, anyway it does make me feel like it is a shame that we do not get to see all those colors. Great video Martin, so much to think about now
Very intresting subject Martin, but I don't think we can imagen color that we can't see as when we try to imagen color we will in our brains be directed towards the concept color we already know from experience and as for experiments with colors, unless you find a way for your ros pick up light or the pigments that they are sensitive to I doubt we will ever see more colors than we can now. But great think video, I hope alot of religious people see it, though they will likely go God done it!
I take it you saw the documentary talking about the ancient greek's colour perception and the perception of some african tribes suggesting colour perception is varied and we all see different colours. Also our colour perception can be messed around with. Colour is an invention of the brain.
I've also wondered about colour perception. I wonder if individuals actually see colours differently. We know colour blindness exists, but what if everyone sees colours slightly differently? Perhaps according to the shape or even colour of their eyes? How would we know? It could explain why sometimes we disagree with someone if a certain shade is more green or blue for example. Everyone says I have blue eyes, but to me they are without any doubt green. What's that about?
@Wotanraven The eye thing may just be that people don't want to cope with the question, so there are two official eye colours: blue or brown, fit it, weirdo.
What we label as colours may vary from culture to culture but there is also the possibility that when we look at the same colour, and agree with the label, we still may perceive it in our heads differently, the colour you call red and associate with danger may be perceived in my head as the colour you call blue, and we can't possibly know!
@MartinJWillett Sure, for my eye colour thing there may be bias that eyes can either be brown or blue. But when I debated with people saying "no! can't you see my eyes are damn green! not blue!" they'd still insist that they're blue. Unless they're really unable to cope with eyes being green, or that I'm unable to cope that my eyes are blue, there seems to be a truly different perception of colour. But honestly, I see in the mirror, my eyed seem very clearly green! Wtf! I don't understand. :D
@thegoodlocust haha XD actually to be honest, I'd prefer having light blue eyes. I think it would be much cooler. I'm actually content at people thinking I have blue eyes, because that's the colour I wish they were, but unfortunately I don't agree.
As for widening the colour perception, that's something I'm not sure on. I think it's easiest to imagine that they simply have the same spectrum of colour but streched over a wider range of frequencies (and thus perceiving more nuance between the different colours) but that's just because it's easier than imaging wholy new colours.
@BaileysBeads :D Yes, that is exactly what I want people to do, blow their minds trying to imagine a colour that can't be seen, even though we know there are several of them.
@BaileysBeads Right, I can empathize with that. The closest I have come is having a waistcoat which has a back panel which shimmers between green and purple, it's sort of octarine. One day I know I'll have that new colour.
As for what color is to us, how we perceive colour (or anything) is a combination of the phsycial world and how our senses and brain cooperate to turn it into understandable data.
Oh I'm pretty confident in this. Colour theory is exactly that, a theory. It's the best fitting model we found to apply to reality. But it's imperfect because not all colours are equal. We have no trouble with a dark blue and a dark red, but a dark yellow just doesn't seem right does it? That's because red and blue are on the opposite ends of our perception (moving into infrared and ultraviolet) they look so good in darker shades because they're already bordering on not being perceived.
@BaileysBeads so in other words, 'shade' and 'colour' are human definitions and they don't really exist in such a cut and dry way. But because we want to, we're forcing our own framework on top if it.
Sorry for the partial answer, but what colors count as 'shades' will depend on wether you're using rgb or cmyk. Personally, I see absolute definitions as important for the sake of communication, but there's a reason 'shades' is used as an example that something isn't a black and white matter.
@defect530 Now that reminds me of another question that has long bothered me, do people who perceive numbers as shapes and colours and so on agree with each other? So what flavours corresponded with which colours? Would your answers surprise food technologists?
@MartinJWillett well it's more of a sensation then a taste. hard to explain when sober. when i was young i always wondered if people perceived colors different. that would be the key answer in my opinion.
Light is finite, but primate evolution has allowed humans the ability to interpret different waves lengths to a certain point.
Other animals can use light more efficiently than we humans and eagles have polarised light vision.
I’m surmising that our eyes take in and read Electromagnetic radiation and our brains convert this information into the appropriate Colours.
I’m pretty sure colour doesn’t exist, but simply an interpretation of our brain.
33Crazydude 2 months ago
Neuroscience is fascinating to me, I wish I had time to pursue a degree in it. Color itself is just perception. Humans have only three color receptors and therefore the visible colors are limited by the combinatorial of those three. The external source of color is light which is continuum but light receptors are discrete (only light of a certain band will fit). The relative concentration of light that fills those bands is interpreted by our brains into gradation. TMK
iMaDeMoN2012 3 months ago
@iMaDeMoN2012 Fine, but is it possible to imagine an invisible colour? If yes how could you describe it to me? Do animals which can perceive different colours imagine more colours or are the colours we can see the only colours which are imaginable by any brain and they have to parcel them out across a different range of frequencies? What we see as red is to most deep sea fish an invisible colour - infra yellow, a mythical colour beyond their perception, but could they imagine it as red?
MartinJWillett 3 months ago
Take a digital camera and point it at the lens of your TV remote while pressing any button on that remote. You'll see a purple-violet colour being emitted from the remote on the camera screen, but when looking directly at the remote you will see no light. What you see is ultraviolet light being relayed to you by the camera (which can detect ultraviolet) in the form of visible light at the highest visible frequency (violet)
makkathran 3 months ago
@makkathran Aren't remote controls infrared not ultraviolet? Most old school video cameras can see very well in infrared so need filters to prevent unwanted effects, remove the filters and you can create cheap night vision equipment.
MartinJWillett 3 months ago
@MartinJWillett I was gonna type infrared, but put ultraviolet down because the light looked violet-ish. I knew it was either of the two, but yea, I guess ultraviolet lens may be problematic.
makkathran 3 months ago
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makkathran 3 months ago
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makkathran 3 months ago
Human brains are more or less all the same in terms of what frequencies of light we can detect. The evolution of the eye meant our frequency range has broadened so we can detect frequencies in between the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums (a TINY fraction of all known frequencies). Frequencies that are not visible to us will have a 'colour', but we can not detect them because our eyes did not evolve that way.
makkathran 3 months ago
@makkathran This has not addressed the issue of colour. We can only imagine colours that we can see. Is that because we can imagine all the colours that are imaginable and we parcel them out among the frequencies our eyes can actually detect? We know other colours exist, we know other animals can see them, but what colour do they see inside their brains? Is a bee's ultra violet simply our violet and our violet they see as blue or is bee purple a colour which can be imagined as a distinct colour?
MartinJWillett 3 months ago
@MartinJWillett So you're getting at the nature in which we perceive colour. If other animals perceive more or less colours than humans, then I would think, for example, 'human green' would appear different to them as the object reflecting green to us may also reflect ultraviolet, infrared, xray, radio, gamma , etc. Nearly everything reflects infrared. We can not perceive infrared, but if other animal can (in addition to visible light) then infrared would mix with other colours.
makkathran 3 months ago
Different objects reflect certain frequencies of light, and absorb the rest. Charcoal absorbs nearly all frequencies in the visible light spectrum, which is why it is very 'black'. Some objects reflect nearly all frequencies of the visible light spectrum, which is why they are very 'white'. Colour is a phenomenon caused by the presence of light reflected by objects. Humans only receive a tiny proportion of all light frequencies, which is why we only see some reflected frequencies.
makkathran 3 months ago
I think this is a question for predator.
topperheartramada 3 months ago
The thing is - the difference between "colours" and "shades" is mostly cultural.
The only reason there is a finite number of "colors" is because we've given them a finite number of words.
For instance - in Hebrew there is one word for "Violet" and "Purple". An Israeli would insist that they're the same color.
In many languages there is no word for "Blue". Most Africans will say the sky is black - a different shade of black at different hours.
Go to Wikipedia for "Categorical Perception".
ikisdragonfist 4 months ago
It's not exactly what you asked for, but there is a difference between colour from light and colour from pigmentation. They have different primaries and don't mix in the same way to produce secondary colours, and don't necessarily produce the same secondary colours when they do. Ultimately light mixes to produce white (because it's light) and pigments to produce a muddy brown (because they're pigments).
abjectreality 4 months ago
@abjectreality Yes, that's the easy stuff. It doesn't answer any of my questions. It's just the stuff that's easy to demonstrate with experiments so people who make out that they know everything about colour bang on about this stuff as if it contains significant answers. It doesn't explain why purple is produced by mixing red and blue rather than a dark shade of a colour of intermediate frequency as happens when red and yellow or yellow and blue are mixed. At least it doesn't to me.
MartinJWillett 4 months ago
@MartinJWillett
But 'pigmented' colour is only visible because of how it absorbs light in the first place, and light colour has a different spectrum. Insects make use of colours we can't detect to find the right flowers to pollinate so it's of use to them, it's a part of the system in nature (like yellow usually meaning danger). What you're getting at is probably a subjective understanding of colour, and there's no answer for that.
abjectreality 3 months ago
@abjectreality When the snowdrops bloom just think about the colourful show that you can't see. It's obvious that a white flower that blooms at a time when most insects are too cold to fly probably isn't really white but as gaudy and bright in the near ultraviolet as daffodils are in their yellow hues.
MartinJWillett 3 months ago
@MartinJWillett
It's lack of perception, colours beyond our ability to see. It's still a spectral occurrence, without light there is no colour for we couldn't see them.
abjectreality 3 months ago
Comment removed
makkathran 3 months ago
You've hit upon something that is farther reaching than color perception. You've hinted at reality perception and how we interpret the reality we think we live in. It all comes down to the brain. (I usually eat my shrimp without thinking past the slightly pink color)....What color is a radio wave? A gamma ray? A manta ray... Would higher spacial dimensions have differing wavelengths of light? Could you "see" gravity waves? And why the hell is the Hulk green?
mydogbanjo 4 months ago
@mydogbanjo Gravity is not a wave. It is not at all related to the electromagnetic spectrum in the sense of visible perception. The Hulk's skin is green because it reflects the frequency (that we assign 'Green') and absorbs all other frequencies in the visible light spectrum!
makkathran 3 months ago
@makkathran Ha ha....I'm jesting at the same time I'm commenting about interesting things. Actually the Hulk looks green for the reasons you stated but that doesn't explain why he turns green in the first place. And if you study some of the theoretical physics out there you would indeed begin to think that there may be gravity waves separate from the electromagnetic spectrum. Actually gravity is still a huge mystery and M-Theory explores it a wee bit! Cheers!
mydogbanjo 3 months ago
A better question, do all humans perceive green the same way? I say yes. Perception is not relative it's like television. It's an exact science. Our brains are built to produce a particular image, change the brain or the detectors, you change the image.
It appears only radiation, particularly electromagnetic radiation, is sensitive enough to be formed into images so any source of radiation or reflectors of radiation is visible and could have particular color given a detector.
iMaDeMoN2012 3 months ago
@iMaDeMoN2012 Generally speaking you are right, however I'm color blind to some reds and greens so I would perceive them differently than someone who is not. A bats brain is wired for sonar location and my in fact "see" sound. It gets interesting when the brain starts to interpret one sense in a form normally associated with another sense. We know for instance that chemicals, (drugs), distort senses and the perception of time and space. An interesting topic for speculation!
mydogbanjo 3 months ago
And to add to the confusion color mixes do not do the same results when comparing solid inks to optics.
toulouse666 4 months ago
Startin to sound an awful lot like a dope smoking lefty hippy martin. I would make a video response to this but it would quickly degrade into an attack on your masculinity, and I don't have any answer that the scientific community recognizes. or that make sense, or that aren't offensive.
Still hard not to enjoy the video. Sorry if i ruined your high on life buzz wasn't my intention, but i had to post that cause i found it funny.
MsReefmaster 4 months ago
A while back I saw a documentary on a couple British lasses who had a genetic mutation that gave them an additional receptor in their eyes that was a slightly different form of the green receptor. It allowed them to perceive shades of green we cannot.
When you look at platinum, silver, iridium, osmium what color do you see?
They all look the same....but not gold. Gold falls within our visual spectrum, but imagine if you had alien eyes and could perceive the UV the others reflect.
Color.
thegoodlocust 4 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
I should really read my comments befor I click post, this is a correction... unless you find a way for your rods pick up light or the pigments that they are not yet sensitive to I doubt we will ever see more colors than we can now. Sorry for the spam
TheRenekruse 4 months ago
I just have to add that it does make me hmm I don't think envious or jealous is the right word to use but something along those lines with a envious with a smile? maybe there is an english word I am lacking to express it, anyway it does make me feel like it is a shame that we do not get to see all those colors. Great video Martin, so much to think about now
TheRenekruse 4 months ago
Very intresting subject Martin, but I don't think we can imagen color that we can't see as when we try to imagen color we will in our brains be directed towards the concept color we already know from experience and as for experiments with colors, unless you find a way for your ros pick up light or the pigments that they are sensitive to I doubt we will ever see more colors than we can now. But great think video, I hope alot of religious people see it, though they will likely go God done it!
TheRenekruse 4 months ago
I take it you saw the documentary talking about the ancient greek's colour perception and the perception of some african tribes suggesting colour perception is varied and we all see different colours. Also our colour perception can be messed around with. Colour is an invention of the brain.
NoFaithNoPain 4 months ago
I've also wondered about colour perception. I wonder if individuals actually see colours differently. We know colour blindness exists, but what if everyone sees colours slightly differently? Perhaps according to the shape or even colour of their eyes? How would we know? It could explain why sometimes we disagree with someone if a certain shade is more green or blue for example. Everyone says I have blue eyes, but to me they are without any doubt green. What's that about?
Wotanraven 4 months ago
@Wotanraven The eye thing may just be that people don't want to cope with the question, so there are two official eye colours: blue or brown, fit it, weirdo.
What we label as colours may vary from culture to culture but there is also the possibility that when we look at the same colour, and agree with the label, we still may perceive it in our heads differently, the colour you call red and associate with danger may be perceived in my head as the colour you call blue, and we can't possibly know!
MartinJWillett 4 months ago
@MartinJWillett Sure, for my eye colour thing there may be bias that eyes can either be brown or blue. But when I debated with people saying "no! can't you see my eyes are damn green! not blue!" they'd still insist that they're blue. Unless they're really unable to cope with eyes being green, or that I'm unable to cope that my eyes are blue, there seems to be a truly different perception of colour. But honestly, I see in the mirror, my eyed seem very clearly green! Wtf! I don't understand. :D
Wotanraven 4 months ago
@Wotanraven Your eyes are blue, but you want them to be green so you can feel special.
I, on the other hand, have absolutely gorgeous green eyes. :)
thegoodlocust 4 months ago
@thegoodlocust haha XD actually to be honest, I'd prefer having light blue eyes. I think it would be much cooler. I'm actually content at people thinking I have blue eyes, because that's the colour I wish they were, but unfortunately I don't agree.
Wotanraven 4 months ago
As for widening the colour perception, that's something I'm not sure on. I think it's easiest to imagine that they simply have the same spectrum of colour but streched over a wider range of frequencies (and thus perceiving more nuance between the different colours) but that's just because it's easier than imaging wholy new colours.
BaileysBeads 4 months ago
@BaileysBeads Try imagining an extra dimmension to the sense of touch :p
Piatasify 4 months ago
@Piatasify Or just try to imagine nothing. Not a vacuum, NOTHING. Mind fuck.
BaileysBeads 4 months ago
@BaileysBeads Like not even 3-d space? The problem with imagining nothing, is that you stop doing it as soon as you imagine ;)
Piatasify 4 months ago
@Piatasify Haha welcome to meditation.
BaileysBeads 4 months ago
@BaileysBeads :D Yes, that is exactly what I want people to do, blow their minds trying to imagine a colour that can't be seen, even though we know there are several of them.
MartinJWillett 4 months ago
@MartinJWillett That was one of my very first ambitions. I believe I was 4 years or something. I wanted to invent a colour that didn't exist yet.
BaileysBeads 4 months ago
@BaileysBeads Right, I can empathize with that. The closest I have come is having a waistcoat which has a back panel which shimmers between green and purple, it's sort of octarine. One day I know I'll have that new colour.
MartinJWillett 4 months ago
As for what color is to us, how we perceive colour (or anything) is a combination of the phsycial world and how our senses and brain cooperate to turn it into understandable data.
Piatasify 4 months ago
Oh I'm pretty confident in this. Colour theory is exactly that, a theory. It's the best fitting model we found to apply to reality. But it's imperfect because not all colours are equal. We have no trouble with a dark blue and a dark red, but a dark yellow just doesn't seem right does it? That's because red and blue are on the opposite ends of our perception (moving into infrared and ultraviolet) they look so good in darker shades because they're already bordering on not being perceived.
BaileysBeads 4 months ago
@BaileysBeads so in other words, 'shade' and 'colour' are human definitions and they don't really exist in such a cut and dry way. But because we want to, we're forcing our own framework on top if it.
BaileysBeads 4 months ago
Sorry for the partial answer, but what colors count as 'shades' will depend on wether you're using rgb or cmyk. Personally, I see absolute definitions as important for the sake of communication, but there's a reason 'shades' is used as an example that something isn't a black and white matter.
Piatasify 4 months ago
i've tasted colors before but i was very high on LSD.
defect530 4 months ago
@defect530 Now that reminds me of another question that has long bothered me, do people who perceive numbers as shapes and colours and so on agree with each other? So what flavours corresponded with which colours? Would your answers surprise food technologists?
MartinJWillett 4 months ago
@MartinJWillett well it's more of a sensation then a taste. hard to explain when sober. when i was young i always wondered if people perceived colors different. that would be the key answer in my opinion.
defect530 4 months ago