Reflections on Intersections of Color and Philosophy

The color world includes chromatic and achromatic objects considered from various aspects, i.e., science, art, commerce, philosophy, etc. while the majority of sciences focuses on colors’ instruction, synthesis and formulation, to enhance the physical-chemical properties of colorants for a variety of applications, the other aspects consider the aesthetics attributes of colors for final commercial purposes. although there is an acceptable overlap among all of these features, color physics aims to measure the optical properties of objects to quantify and quality control their color appearance. the most interesting thing is that there is strong philosophy behind all of these different aspects of color cognition. philosophically speaking, color is merely neither a metaphysical nor an epistemology category; rather, it is a combination of both and something more as well. to clarify the above statement further, color lies in neither the object alone nor in the subject alone; rather, the epistemology of the subject constructs it while observing the object that is being reflected in the light or transmitting it. taking this into cognizance, color physics and chemistry are working on the properties of the objects that can change the reflection and or transmission of the light to create variedness of the colors and their shades. this study is the natural philosophy of color. there is another branch of the cultural study of the philosophy where people’s social and cultural cognitions of color get focused attention. the present paper explores these aspects to find the interesting spaces of convergence between color and philosophy.

Reflections on intersections of Color and Philosophy

The color world includes chromatic and achromatic objects considered from various aspects, i.e., science, art, commerce, philosophy, etc. While the majority of sciences focuses on colors’ instruction, synthesis and formulation, to enhance the physical-chemical properties of colorants for a variety of applications, the other aspects consider the aesthetics attributes of colors for final commercial purposes. Although there is an acceptable overlap among all of these features, color physics aims to measure the optical properties of objects to quantify and quality control their color appearance. The most interesting thing is that there is strong philosophy behind all of these different aspects of color cognition. Philosophically speaking, color is merely neither a metaphysical nor an epistemology category; rather, it is a combination of both and something more as well. To clarify the above statement further, color lies in neither the object alone nor in the subject alone; rather, the epistemology of the subject constructs it while observing the object that is being reflected in the light or transmitting it. Taking this into cognizance, color physics and chemistry are working on the properties of the objects that can change the reflection and or transmission of the light to create variedness of the colors and their shades. This study is the natural philosophy of color. There is another branch of the cultural study of the philosophy where people’s social and cultural cognitions of color get focused attention. The present paper explores these aspects to find the interesting spaces of convergence between color and philosophy.