Monday, 4 October 2010

Were the greeks colour blind?

As seen through the eyes of the Ancient Greeks, color perception is a very different thing than our own color perception. In Homer's writing he often described colour by comparing it to objects for example he described the sea and sheep as the colour of wine he also strangely used 'chloros' (green) as the colour of honey and kyanos (cyan) as the colour of Hectors hair. but was his hair really blue or was his perception of color reflect on himself, his people, and his world. We'll never truly know but other ancient greeks used the same descriptions so is our translation of their language and colour descriptions wrong or were they colour blind. In Ancient Greece vision is shown, to be a very subjective practice and a different process from our own visual process. The importance of vision and color held a different place in the mind of the Ancient Greek, but this is the truth of vision everywhere. Sight is a gift to us, and it is a gift that we choose to use, it is a sense whose effect on us is in part created by ourselves individually. Whether we use it one way or another is simply a cultural or biological difference, and in studying the sight of others we can grow infinitely in our appreciation of our own vision and the strength of our minds over our biological and physiological processes.

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