Colour

A critical issue for interspecies cohabitation and interspecies design is facilitating an understanding of different subjectivities between stakeholders where communication using language is impossible.

Colour lies at the intersection of many of the issues relevant to interspecies cohabitation, namely understanding the different Relationships agents use to interpret the physical world.

To illustrate:

• Colour is:

  • A sensation produced by the visual systems of many species
    • The ability to perceive certain wavelengths as visual information is determined by the evolution Adaptation biological systems
  • A term referring to a range of wavelengths within the electromagnetic spectrum perceived by humans
  • In human language (Private), a category of word referring to specific colours (or colour ranges) within the colour spectrum

• Contradictory definitions produce uncertainty

• Linguistic, cultural, and disciplinary biases towards human perception ignores non-human relationships with colour

  • See the "Bias in Language" and "Colour Words" experiments

• Deeper understanding of inter- and intra-species colour perception requires consolidation of knowledge from several domains, e.g., linguistics, humanities, arts, geography, history, ecology, biology, physics, animal behaviour studies, and design.

Understanding of Colour in History

Colours are “no more than mere names so far as the object in which we place them is concerned … they reside only in consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated." (Galileo, 1623, The Assayer)

SIMPL.

By night, The Moon appears brighter by night than by day. without all comparison. And methinks the Moon resembleth that pillar of Clouds and pillar of Fire, which guided the Israelites; which at the presence of the Sun, appeared like a Cloud, but in the night was very glorious. Thus I have by day observed the Moon amidst certain small Clouds, The Moon beheld in the day time, is like to a little cloud. just as if one of them had been coloured white, but by night it shines with much splendor.

SALV.

So that if you had never happened to see the Moon, save onely in the day time, you would not have thought it more shining than one of those Clouds.

^{Galileo, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, The First Dialogue.}

^{Galilei, Galileo, and Kenneth R. Seddon. _Collected Works of Galileo Galilei. Hastings: Delphi Classics, 2017.}

Precedents

• Adaptation to colour
  • probes.examples.adaptation.sex (Private)
  • probes.examples.adaptation.camouflage (Private)
  • probes.examples.adaptation.bioluminescence (Private)
• Interpreting colour
  • Language about Colour
  • probes.examples.colour.dyes (Private)
• probes.examples.adaptation.colour (Private)
• Vision

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