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 Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U .S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands 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, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. 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.