Preface

K. Nassau, Lebanon, New Jersey October, 1996

The aim of this book is to assemble a series of chapters, written by experts in their fields, covering the basics of color – and then some more. This should supply what almost any reader might want to know about color in areas outside their own expertise. Thus the color measurement expert, as well as the general reader, can find here information on the perception, causes, and uses of color. For the artist there are details on the causes, measurement, perception, and reproduction of color. And there are few indeed who would not want to know more about color in anthropology, art, medicine, nature, and about the philosophical aspects of color.

It would be easy to decide on the topics to be included in a multivolume work covering all aspects of color. However there might be a problem in how to limit the number of volumes. To make the same decision for a one-volume work of reasonable size presents a real challenge. I was greatly helped in the early stages of the selection process by Dr. Eric Melse of Voorburg, the Netherlands; he subsequently resigned as co-editor because of the pressure of other obligations.

Each chapter easily could have been many times its final length; several of the contributors have indeed published book-length treatments on their specialties. Yet the publisher’s limitation on length had to be taken seriously. The fact that most of the contributors were ultimately annoyed with me for length restrictions suggests that I was uniformly unfair! Contributors encompass both academia and industry (both in several instances) and were selected to be international in range. Some are specialists in advanced research in their field, others are educators or generalists with a broad overview. Diversity was the aim.

The attempt has been made to cover not just the fundamentals, but also to include work on the frontiers. Two examples are a new approach to testing for the biological and therapeutic effects of color in the addendum to Chapter 9, and the encoding of color in a photo compact disk system of Chapter 14 with its surprising complexity.

Within each chapter, authors were requested to indicate directions of future efforts, where applicable. One might reasonably expect that all would have been learned about color in the more than three hundred years since Newton established the fundamentals of color science. The situation is far from it: the measurement of color still has unresolved complexities (Chapter 2); many of the fine details of color vision remain unknown (Chapter 3); every few decades a new movement in art discovers original ways to use color (Chapter 5); the philosophical approach to color has not yet crystallized (Chapter 7); new pigments and dyes continue to be discovered (Chapters 10 and 11); the study of the biological and therapeutic effects of color is still in its infancy; and so on. Color remains vigorously developing toward maturity.

A most difficult decision involved the application of color in fields extending from the pure arts, such as painting, to the applied, decorative, and commercial areas such as fashion, interior decorating, packaging, and advertising. Since the concepts in the latter groups change periodically as styles change, often on a monthly basis, I decided not to include these topics. The use of color in painting, however, changes only slowly with time. There have been many discussions of the use of color in the paintings of earlier periods, but the twentieth century is mostly neglected; it is therefore a pleasure to have abstract painting covered.

The aim has been to avoid excess technicalities, yet some topics would be meaningless without them. Some chapters, such as those on color measurement, color perception, and color reproduction, require some mathematical details in view of the astonishing complexities involved. Others, such as those on the causes of color, colorants, and color preservation, need to be grounded in the chemistry and physics involved. To produce absolute uniformity and consistency in any such multi-author work might be desirable, but would have required unreasonable effort and ultimately would be of little value. The reader will find that some chapters have many references, while others have only a few or even none. Detailed referencing was felt to be unnecessary where a few extended treatments cited in the “Further Reading” section are available and where these treatments provide both great depth and more than adequate referencing.

The attempt has always been made to include the necessary fundamentals for those whose background lies in other fields. Some overlap was accepted so that chapters should be able to stand on their own to a significant extent, always excepting the basic concepts covered in Chapter 1, which are prerequisite for almost all the other chapters. Some parts of Chapter 1 may seem to be trivial or self-evident, but it is always essential to build from a solid foundation.

There exist many erroneous ideas on color. As one example, we are usually taught in school that there is just one set of three specific primary colors. Since erroneous elementary ideas could lead to the misinterpretation of advanced concepts, such essential basics are covered in Chapter 1. This chapter is part of the first section the science of color, which also contains chapters on the measurement of color, color perception, and on the fifteen physical and chemical causes of color.

The next section deals with color in art, culture, and life, covering the uses of color in abstract painting of the twentieth century; the views on color from anthropology and folklore and from philosophy*; color in plants, animals, and man; as well as the biological and therapeutic effects of light and color. This last is a subject of much controversy but of almost no well-controlled experimental studies; appended is the outline for a new approach to the necessary double-blind investigations.

The last section covers technological aspects: colorants, pigments, and their preservation; color printing and photography; the Photo CD system; and color displays as used in television and computer displays.

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I have also included in Chapter 1 a very brief discussion of three universal paradigms involved in the basics of modern science. Although not strictly necessary for understanding the nature of color, they are an essential part of the nature of light. These important paradigms are fundamental models of science which are at odds with our everyday experiences; each forced a radical change in our understanding of the working of the universe. Two of these three paradigms have been generally accepted and continued exposure has dulled us to their weirdness.

The first great paradigm, the constancy of the speed of light as well as the inability of matter to travel as fast as or faster than light, derives from Einstein’s relativity theory. Here, there are the equivalences of space and time, of mass and energy, as well as of acceleration and gravity.

The second great paradigm, quantum theory, explains the equivalence of the particle and wave characteristics of light (as well as of small quantities of matter such as electrons and atoms). Quantum theory had its roots in the early disagreements between the views of Newton and Hooke on the nature of light some 300 years ago. It was not resolved to general satisfaction until about the middle of this century.

The third great paradigm, involving the non-locality part of quantum theory, was first taken seriously by Einstein, who never felt comfortable with quantum theory because of it. This problem was outlined in the Einstein, Podolski, and Rosen paper of 1934 and clarified as Bell’s Paradox in 1964. Only in the last few years has a series of increasingly more elegant experiments demonstrated that quantum theory is correct and that it is very, very weird indeed, as is briefly indicated in Chapter 1. There is as yet no generally accepted interpretation of the non-locality problem and most physicists have preferred to ignore its complexities and implications.

I bring up these paradigms because I believe that there is need for one more paradigm, a global one that would resolve the dichotomy between the seemingly irreconcilable approaches and attitudes in the “Sciences” and in the “Arts”; the emphasis is meant to indicate what I consider to be the arbitrariness of such designations. The origins of this dichotomy can be traced back to the differing approaches to color of Newton and Goethe outlined in Chapter 1. It is only now being seriously faced by authors such as Zajonc, as also briefly discussed there. The nature of the paradigm required to resolve this issue has yet to be defined. This volume is dedicated to the proposition that there is much common ground between the sciences and the arts and that color is a major connecting bridge.

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Many friends have looked over various parts of this book at various stages and I am appreciative of their invaluable advice. I apologize for the absence of specific names. There were so many and I did not keep track in the early stages, so I decided not to give a partial and seemingly biased listing.

Having written four books by myself, I had always assumed that the editor of a multi-author volume has a much easier time than does an individual book author. As I approach the end of this task, I realize that I was very much in error. I do wish to thank all the contributors for their efforts and their patience.