The Brain 111
Color is Relative
of other colors — not in isolation. The two panels above contain identical blocks of color but they look very different against the background. Check out the website if you have a black and white book. It is an irrelevant question to ask if my red is the same as yours, since my red against one background is not even the same as my red against another.
People generally agree on naming colors but not all languages have the eleven specifically named colors of modern English: black, blue, brown, gray, green, orange, pink, purple, red, white, yellow, if you are interested. Ancient Celtic languages, so called ‘grw languages, recognized only four colors and other languages don’t distinguish purple from blue. Color, or at least the naming of color, is a cultural thing.
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