Radiolab's podcast discussing colors was eye-opening in the sense that it caused me to think about color in a way I had never thought about it before. Of course I knew the that a glass prism caused white light to create "a colored image of the sun," as Newton would put it. However, it was interesting to learn that it was originally thought that the prism simply "muddied" the white light, adding the colors to it. Until listening to the podcast, I had never considered the idea of light existing within itself or as a separate entity with constituent parts. In the age of the scientific revolution, Newton was the first to theorize that light is a physical existence that lives in the real world. Therefore, light can be studied from from a scientific and a philosophical perspective.
However, the idea that light and colors existing in the physical world made me wonder to what extent are they actually physical, considering that light is not matter nor is it definite. For instance, does the wavelengths that produce the color red in a human's eye create the same color red that would be perceived by a dog? The answer is no, which is why Newton had to explore the idea that colors begin in the real physical world, but are finished through the eye and the mind. So, just like emotions, color is uniquely felt as it is not an objective existence.
The eyes translate color from the physical world to the mind. It is within our eyes that cones limit the number of colors that humans are able to grasp and identify. It is for this reason that an interior designer from Pittsburgh was able to look up at a "blue" sky and see colors on red. Being a tetrachromat, she was able to use her addition cone that allowed her to translate additional colors that the rest of us wouldn't even be able to philosophize about. Since Newton's time, little about the science and philosophy of color has been understood to greater lengths. It makes me wonder what kind of discoveries could have been made if Newton had been a tetrachromat.
