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288 pages, Pocket Book
First published September 1, 2010
color only exists if it is perceived, that is to say if it is not only seen by the eyes but also, and most importantly, apprehended and coded by the memory, one's knowledge and one's imagination.One's imagination is in turn conditioned by culture, climate and geography. For example, in the Indo-European tradition from Aristotle to the Middle Ages, the chromatic scale was constructed from light to dark: white, yellow, red, green, black. Blue did not appear (between green and black) until the high Middle Ages; the spectrum as we generally understand it did not appear until Newton's optical experiments in 1665-6. Newton's spectrum was then projected back onto the rainbow, "the representation of which has always remained a matter of trial and error." Our standard seven-color watery arc (or six, if you're flying a flag in San Francisco) is an invention as much as it is a meteorological phenomenon.
