Brown Color

I would like to contribute to the controversy over the nature of the color brown. It is yet another example of how we have to consider that we see the universe as we do not only because of what it is but also because of what we are.

No color is really "real". Color is just how our eyes and brains interpret different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Outside of living things, color is meaningless. But I have concluded that brown is even less "real" than the other colors. We actually see brown because of the nature of our eyes.

Besides the actual colors, there is black, white and, gray. White is a mixture of all colors and black is a complete absence of any light or color. Gray is a mixture of black and white.

But our eyes are not completely impartial. There are two combinations of what are known as "Forbidden Colors". Our eyes are unable to process a combination of either red and green or yellow and blue. This is basically because both colors in each forbidden pair are processed by the same part of the eye so that we cannot see a mix of both colors from the same place at the same time.

That is where brown comes in. It is not a "real" color. Brown is what we see if it is a color combination that the eyes cannot process.

The color brown is thus an "error message" that our eyes are not able to correctly process the color combination that is being observed.

Brown is not a mix of colors from throughout the spectrum, that forms white, although the pairs of forbidden colors do have some spectral distance between them. Brown can, of course be mixed with black or white to form shades such as tan.

An interesting thought about color is whether we all interpret colors in the same way. Can you be sure that someone else sees red and blue just as you do? We saw in the posting "The Real Alphabet", on the meteorology and biology blog, www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com , the first posting in the Biology section, July 2009, that the "real alphabet" that we use to describe the world around us does not consist of the letters of the alphabet, but of what I refer to as "sense elements".

These sense elements are the most fundamental components of our communication, that are impossible to describe with words. A person has to already know, by their senses, these sense elements before they can participate in any kind of communication with words.

The most important of these sense elements is color. Can you imagine trying to describe your favorite color to someone who is completely blind? I do not mean an object of that color but the color itself.

It cannot be done. It is impossible. Colors must just be experienced by the senses before they can be communicated with words. But what that must mean is that we can never be sure if we all interpret color in the same way, because we cannot describe the color to each other with words.