Lecture 1

COLOUR PHYSICS AND MEASUREMENT

(TE 509)

LECTURE 1

• Colors are important in both identifying objects,

i.e., in locating them in space, and in re-

identifying them

• Much is known about human color vision both

subjectively and quantitatively from the fields of

physics, psychology and physiology

• Despite much thought, by philosophers and

scientists, we seem little closer now to an

agreed account of color than we ever were ! ! !

• The disagreement:

• Some theorists believe colors to be perceiver-

relative, e.g., dispositions or powers to induce

experiences of a certain kind, or to appear in

certain ways to observers of a certain kind

• Others take them to be objective, physical

properties of objects

• The major problem with color has to do with

fitting what we seem to know about colors into

what science, particularly physics, tells us about

physical bodies and their qualities

• we experience color as an intrinsic feature of the

surfaces of physical bodies, or as a property

spread throughout a volume, e.g., Apple Juice

• It is this problem that historically has led the

major physicists who have thought about color,

to hold a common view: that the colors we

ordinarily and naturally take objects to possess,

are such that physical objects do not actually

have them

• COLOUR is a sensory perception

produced in brain.

• It requires:

• A Light Source

• An Object

• An Observer