Goethe’s Theory of Colors: The 1810 Treatise That Inspired Kandinsky & Early Abstract Painting

I doubt I need to list for you the many titles of the 18th cen­tu­ry Ger­man savant and poly­math Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe, but allow me to add one or two that were new to me, at least: col­or the­o­rist (or phe­nom­e­nol­o­gist of col­or) and prog­en­i­tor of abstract expres­sion­ism. As a fas­ci­nat­ing Book­tryst post informs us, Goethe’s book on col­or, Zur Far­ben­lehre (The­o­ry of Col­ors), writ­ten in 1810, dis­put­ed the New­ton­ian view of the sub­ject and for­mu­lat­ed a psy­cho­log­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal account of the way we actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence col­or as a phe­nom­e­non. In his account, Goethe describes how he came by his views:

Along with the rest of the world I was con­vinced that all the col­ors are con­tained in the light; no one had ever told me any­thing dif­fer­ent, and I had nev­er found the least cause to doubt it, because I had no fur­ther inter­est in the sub­ject.

But how I was aston­ished, as I looked at a white wall through the prism, that it stayed white! That only where it came upon some dark­ened area, it showed some col­or, then at last, around the win­dow sill all the col­ors shone… It did­n’t take long before I knew here was some­thing sig­nif­i­cant about col­or to be brought forth, and I spoke as through an instinct out loud, that the New­ton­ian teach­ings were false.

Schopen­hauer would lat­er write that “[Goethe] deliv­ered in full mea­sure what was promised by the title of his excel­lent work: data toward a the­o­ry of colour. They are impor­tant, com­plete, and sig­nif­i­cant data, rich mate­r­i­al for a future the­o­ry of colour.” It was a the­o­ry, Schopen­hauer admits, that does not “[fur­nish] us with a real expla­na­tion of the essen­tial nature of colour, but real­ly pos­tu­lates it as a phe­nom­e­non, and mere­ly tells us how it orig­i­nates, not what it is.”

Anoth­er lat­er philo­soph­i­cal inter­preter of Goethe, Lud­wig Wittgen­stein—a thinker great­ly inter­est­ed in visu­al per­cep­tion—also saw Goethe’s work as oper­at­ing very dif­fer­ent­ly than New­ton’s optics—not as a sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry but rather as an intu­itive schema. Wittgen­stein remarked that Goethe’s work “is real­ly not a the­o­ry at all. Noth­ing can be pre­dict­ed by means of it. It is, rather, a vague schemat­ic out­line, of the sort we find in [William] James’s psy­chol­o­gy. There is no exper­i­men­tum cru­cis for Goethe’s the­o­ry of colour.”

Yet a third lat­er Ger­man genius, Wern­er Heisen­berg, com­ment­ed on the influ­ence of Zur Far­ben­lehre, writ­ing that “Goethe’s colour the­o­ry has in many ways borne fruit in art, phys­i­ol­o­gy and aes­thet­ics. But vic­to­ry, and hence influ­ence on the research of the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry, has been New­ton’s.”

goethefarbkreis1810

I’m not fit to eval­u­ate the rel­a­tive mer­its of Goethe’s the­o­ry, or lack there­of, ver­sus New­ton’s rig­or­ous work on optics. Whole books have been writ­ten on the sub­ject. But what­ev­er his inten­tions, Goethe’s work has been well-received as a psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly accu­rate account that has also, through his text and many illus­tra­tions you see here, had sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry painters also great­ly con­cerned with the psy­chol­o­gy of col­or, most notably Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, who pro­duced his own “schemat­ic out­line” of the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of col­or titled Con­cern­ing the Spir­i­tu­al in Art, a clas­sic of mod­ernist aes­thet­ic the­o­ry. As is usu­al­ly the case with Goethe, the influ­ence of this sin­gle work is wider and deep­er than he prob­a­bly ever fore­saw.

You can find Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Ebooks. It’s also avail­able in audio for­mat in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.  An afford­able ver­sion can also be pur­chased on Ama­zon.

goethe1

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Caught in the Act of Cre­ation, 1926

When Respect­ed Authors, from Goethe to Hen­ry Miller, Try Their Hand at Paint­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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  • Glen Etzkorn says:

    Mod­ern Col­or the­o­rist S.H.Rogoff dis­cov­ered the dou­ble or reverse after-image 1952 dis­played on the cov­er of J.Albers first ‘Col­or Inter­ac­tion. Hal as Albers grad­u­ate assis­tant task with putting the book­let had 3–4ths of his own col­or mod­ules includ­ed in the book­let. Among many of con­cepts of Hal’s Col­or the­o­ry the­sis titled ‘Opti­cal Illu­sions and Vibra­tional The­o­ry’ denot­ed his cor­rec­tion of erro­neous nature of the con­cept called Simul­ta­ne­ous Con­trast to rede­fine Simul­ta­ne­ous Pres­ence. A great exam­ple of this ear­ly work is on a FB page https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.586991144659431.1073741829.586980831327129&type=1

  • mljoffe says:

    Thanks; nev­er heard of Goethe’s col­or work

  • Brendan Ferguson says:

    You can find Goethe’s book on colour here: http://theoryofcolor.org/Theory+of+Color

    Thanks for the great lit­tle arti­cle.

  • Rick Bobbette says:

    Isaac Newton’s Scam Spec­trum – Sev­er­al ways to make it observ­able and how they dis­prove his colour the­o­ry

    R.S.W.Bobbette 2018

    The repeat­ed­ly observ­able fact is that colours gen­er­at­ed in and through prisms nev­er orig­i­nate from a “rain­bow spec­trum”, but always from pairs of vari­ably sep­a­rat­ed bands of colours relat­ed to rel­a­tive dark-light con­trasts. These bands are about equal in over­all width, with the cen­tral stripe of each less dis­tinct than the out­er two. Ini­tial­ly, no green colour occurs nor any spec­trum. The appear­ance of a “rain­bow spec­trum” is a sec­ondary effect, a par­lour trick that can be accom­plished in sev­er­al instruc­tive ways.

    The first method is the one used by New­ton to put over his far­ci­cal, but math­e­mat­i­cal­ly acces­si­ble, idea of colour pro­duc­tion. Of course, the method of the scam in this case is to reduce the body of white light to where the oth­er­wise and actu­al­ly sep­a­rate colour bands slight­ly over­lap or inter­sect. This is the basic prin­ci­ple of all forms of the scam. This first method allows a portable result, the nar­row beam of light, to avoid the embar­rass­ing draw­ing togeth­er of the two pre-exist­ing colour bands, where the colours actu­al­ly orig­i­nate. The fact that the colour bands arise sep­a­rat­ed by vari­able dis­tances (i.e. refrac­tive angles) means that the blue colour is not the “oth­er half” of the same light that is behind the red band. This is only implied by the scam spec­trum. The scam spec­trum also hides, or makes hard to dis­crim­i­nate, that the pur­ple and vio­let stripes of the blue colour band are actu­al­ly pro­ject­ed or illu­mi­nat­ed in front of rel­a­tive dark­ness, from the side; the com­plete red colour band is clear­ly seen to be shone through from behind. These three facts do not read­i­ly sug­gest a uni­form approach along any lines put for­ward by New­ton, etc.
    The “rain­bow spec­trum” is not cre­at­ed by one uni­fied beam of light being split into colours, but from two dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppo­site, sep­a­rate beams of already coloured light being brought togeth­er by reduc­ing what sep­a­rates them to where they com­bine to cre­ate the oth­er­wise non-exis­tent green colour. An equal­ly applied “dif­fer­en­tial refrac­tion” is not an option.

    This first exam­ple has the light going through the prism and the colours being observed on a sur­face. It is also pos­si­ble to cre­ate the scam by observ­ing the colour bands direct­ly through the prism. If you look at a bright win­dow, through a prism, you will notice the colour bands on either side of the win­dow, along the line of refrac­tion. Now we can see the rea­son for a con­cept like refrac­tion, when we twist the prism back and forth and see the dra­mat­ic nar­row­ing and broad­en­ing of the light image of the win­dow. This mea­sur­able phe­nom­e­non is the basis of refrac­tion, and there­fore of dif­fer­en­tial refrac­tion, and it is this that allows us to pro­duce a sec­ond ver­sion of Newton’s Scam Spec­trum. If you twist the prism far enough, you reduce the light of the win­dow to where — voila! — you have the “rain­bow spec­trum”, down the line of refrac­tion.

    But there are some prob­lems here. No mat­ter how you broad­en or shrink the win­dow image, the colour bands remain unal­tered to any vis­i­ble extent. This at least sug­gests that they occur after the light is bent. They mere­ly move and fol­low the light-dark con­trast line. When brought togeth­er, both bands move towards the nar­row angle of the prism, but the red one moves much more quick­ly and “catch­es up” with the blue. They remain unal­tered until reach­ing the scam spec­trum, when they begin to over­lap or inter­sect, with the yel­low and blue stripes chang­ing to green, until they merge and are replaced by one green stripe. Only now do the colour bands begin to shrink, but not equal­ly. Orange and pur­ple dis­ap­pear first, with red, green and vio­let dis­ap­pear­ing togeth­er as the light is choked off.
    Fur­ther­more, the colour bands have the abil­i­ty to move in two dif­fer­ent direc­tions, or at dif­fer­ent speeds, with­in them­selves. Let me explain. There is a small shelf edge pro­ject­ing into the win­dow view, and this shows the iden­ti­cal red band as the side of the win­dow, but much short­er and pro­ject­ed about one and a half band widths into the win­dow. Now as you tilt the prism to shrink the win­dow, this shelf pro­jec­tion shrinks in accord with refrac­tion, until about three colour band widths from the blue band, it dis­ap­pears into the over­all edge. But through­out this entire span, the small colour band has been fol­low­ing the shrink­ing shelf, mov­ing back­wards into the main edge colour band while the whole moves for­ward. No “dif­fer­en­tial refrac­tion” can accom­mo­date these appear­ances, dis­ap­pear­ances and move­ments.

    Prisms cer­tain­ly should be accord­ed much more hon­est, inter­est­ed study. Anoth­er way of pro­duc­ing Newton’s Scam Spec­trum requires a bit of set-up but is, I think, worth the inter­est­ing results.
    Take flat black and flat white paint, mix equal­ly to paint grey a pole 2 inch­es wide and 5 feet high. Paint a piece of card­board 2x5 feet flat black and a piece 2x3 feet flat white (it’s rel­a­tive dimen­sions and not actu­al mea­sure­ments that mat­ter). Stand the grey pole in front of the black board in bright light, and look at it through the prism. You will see the clear­est “rain­bow spec­trum” down the line of the pole. There are two ways of show­ing this to be a ver­sion of Newton’s Scam Spec­trum. To do the first you put the white board over the low­er half of the black, and look; sud­den­ly at the white bor­der the blue band turns to red and the red to blue, con­tin­u­ing down the line of refrac­tion. So we have the remark­able anachro­nism of Newton’s Scam Spec­trum cheek to jowl with a “com­plete” invert­ed spec­trum, with red meet­ing vio­let in the mid­dle! Plac­ing the white just to the right or the left of the pole pro­duces a “com­plete spec­trum” of either two red or two blue bands…

    The cre­ation of colour in a prism is repeat­ed­ly seen to be more close­ly relat­ed to rel­a­tive dark-light con­trasts than to either refrac­tion or any nec­es­sary red – blue con­tin­u­um. This change of colour from blue to red down the line of refrac­tion, mere­ly because the back­ground changes from rel­a­tive­ly dark to rel­a­tive­ly light, shows up as lies all the con­cepts of pris­mat­ic colour pro­duc­tion put for­ward by New­ton and his idol­iz­ers. The fact that the blue band abuts the red one on the same line of refrac­tion is also absolute proof that, far from being parts of a right­ful­ly belong­ing togeth­er “rain­bow spec­trum”, the colour bands are indi­rect­ly relat­ed to each oth­er at best. This shows the absur­di­ty (if pre­vi­ous evi­dence hasn’t) of there being any pos­si­bil­i­ty of refrac­tion, dif­fer­en­tial or oth­er­wise, in the pro­duc­tion of these phe­nom­e­na of colour. The only cer­tain rela­tion­ship to refrac­tion is the left-right ori­en­ta­tion of the bands, and prob­a­bly their width.
    The trick to Newton’s Scam Spec­trum in this case is the nar­row­ness of the pole. Sta­ple a sheet of writ­ing paper to the pole and you will see the colour bands sep­a­rat­ed.

    Final­ly, and less explic­it­ly, by twist­ing around a prism in size­able bright light, the “rain­bow spec­trum” can be seen pro­ject­ed onto sur­faces, rep­re­sent­ed by at least three exam­ples. One dupli­cates the win­dow method, with a bright spot that is reduced by twist­ing the prism until the bands meet. Anoth­er has the bright spot vis­i­ble on a card near the prism, but reduc­ing in size until 8–10 feet away (in this exam­ple) a “spec­trum” appears. The third traces back to the nine­ty degree angles of the prism, but shows no bright spot. It is aligned with the bands on either side of the angle and is cer­tain­ly a pro­jec­tive ver­sion of the nar­row pole effect.

    These are the few meth­ods I have been able to attempt; I’m sure there are oth­ers. Again, every sup­posed colour spec­trum aris­ing from a prism can be resolved into the actu­al­ly exist­ing sep­a­rate colour bands. These arise in prisms at oppo­site sides of the body of light, adja­cent to rel­a­tive dark­ness. The light involved in the red side of the scam spec­trum is not involved in the cre­ation of the blue side.

    Post­Script…
    It should be not­ed that the “invert­ed spec­trum” com­press­es to pro­duce a magen­ta stripe that replaces the red and vio­let ones, as the oth­er­wise non-exis­tent green replaces the blue and yel­low. Any physics of pris­mat­ic colour rela­tion­ships, that is not fan­ta­sy, will have to address four ini­tial­ly occur­ring colours, plus four derived from their com­bin­ing. The pris­mat­ic “sev­en colours of the rain­bow spec­trum”, with every­thing derived from it, have been made up for math­e­mat­i­cal con­ve­nience and easy sales­man­ship, and do not rep­re­sent sound­ly report­ed inves­tiga­tive sci­ence.

  • r.s.w.bobbette says:

    Newton’s Scam Spec­trum – Pris­mat­ic Colour Observed

    R.S.W.Bobbette 2020

    ABSTRACT
    Through prisms, there is no con­tin­u­ous­ly vari­able ‘spec­trum’ spon­ta­neous­ly pro­duced; all con­tin­u­ous pat­terns of colour occur due to struc­tural­ly nar­row or spa­tial­ly manip­u­lat­ed prox­im­i­ty of the actu­al­ly spon­ta­neous edge- or con­trast- effect light/dark inter­ac­tions that pro­duce two actu­al­ly sep­a­rate colour bands. The fact that pris­mat­ic colours reverse depend­ing on whether the light/dark inter­ac­tion is direct­ly per­ceived or seen reflect­ed proves that these colours are not pro­duced by the prism direct­ly, but by the rel­a­tive per­spec­tive con­text of the light/dark rela­tion­ship… includ­ing both a bright body in a dark ground or a dark body in a bright ground. It is this light/dark inter­ac­tion that leaves the prism, with bright­ness bent in front of dark­ness giv­ing vio­let on the dark side, indi­go at the light/dark edge, and blue on the bright side. Red occurs with bright­ness seen behind bent dark­ness on the dark side, orange at the light/dark edge, and yel­low on the bright side. This rela­tion­ship holds in both visu­al con­texts –e.g., direct­ly per­ceived the dark­ness is clear­ly seen through the bright­ness to give vio­let, while on the same side the bright­ness will strike the reflec­tive sur­face first and be seen through the fol­low­ing dark­ness to give red. Pris­mat­ic green is an arti­fact of the bright body nar­rowed to pro­duce the inter­sec­tion of the two bright side colours – blue and yel­low. Mauve is sim­i­lar­ly pro­duced by reduc­ing the dark body to inte­grate the dark side colours red and vio­let. Physi­cists have ignored any thor­ough descrip­tion of the actu­al occur­rence of colour through prisms, as it in no way sup­ports their math­e­mat­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient fan­ta­sy of the nature of colour.

    CONTENTS
    NEWTON’S SCAM SPECTRUM……………………..1
    HONEST OBSERVATION ………………………………7
    PRISMATIC COLOUR ……………………………………9
    THE TWO VISUAL CONTEXTS……………………….14
    Sim­i­lar­i­ties …………………………………………………14
    Dif­fer­ences ………………………………………………..15
    LIMITS…………………………………………………………16

    “…the rea­son of the colours aris­ing on the edges is much the same, as will appear to one that shall a lit­tle con­sid­er it.” Well, let’s see what “…will appear to one that shall a lit­tle con­sid­er it.”

    NEWTON’S SCAM SPECTRUM
    Physi­cists, with­out ques­tion, believe Isaac Newton’s claim that the pro­duc­tion of a rain­bow-like row of colours from a nar­row light beam through a prism, which he dubbed a spec­trum, is a spon­ta­neous, con­tin­u­ous­ly vari­able event and proves that the light splits into colours; which if true could only be due to the indi­vid­ual colours react­ing dif­fer­ent­ly to the resis­tance to trans­mis­sion shown by the bend­ing of the light (dif­fer­en­tial refrac­tion). But, the repeat­ed­ly observ­able fact is that colours gen­er­at­ed in and through prisms nev­er spon­ta­neous­ly orig­i­nate from a ‘rain­bow spec­trum’, but always from pairs of bands of three colours adja­cent to or across rel­a­tive dark-light con­trasts, oppo­site to each oth­er and sep­a­rat­ed by vari­able and move­able dis­tances. These bands, called here the ‘red band’ and ‘blue band’ are about equal in over­all width, with the cen­tral colour stripe of each less dis­tinct than the out­er two. To begin with, no green colour occurs nor any spec­trum.

    As a cau­tion to those eager to pro­claim illu­so­ry, mere­ly phys­i­o­log­i­cal colours, it should be not­ed that all colour phe­nom­e­na described here can be record­ed dig­i­tal­ly through a CMOS sen­sor exact­ly on a par with ‘real’ colours. And those who rush to bring in phe­nom­e­na from oth­er con­texts of colour gen­er­a­tion and manip­u­la­tion, should remem­ber that whales were stud­ied as fish for cen­turies – per­ti­nence must be proven by oth­er than this or that sim­i­lar­i­ty.

    What is pre­sent­ed here is only intend­ed to be con­sid­ered in the con­text of prisms. The appear­ance of a ‘rain­bow spec­trum’ through a prism is a sec­ondary effect, a par­lour trick that can be accom­plished in sev­er­al instruc­tive ways.

    The first method is the one used by New­ton to put over his math­e­mat­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient, but sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly inad­e­quate, idea of colour pro­duc­tion. Of course, the method of the scam in this case is to reduce the body of white light to where the oth­er­wise and actu­al­ly sep­a­rate colour bands slight­ly over­lap or inter­sect. This is the basic prin­ci­ple of all forms of the scam. This first method allows a portable result, the nar­row beam of light, to avoid the embar­rass­ing draw­ing togeth­er of the two pre-exist­ing colour bands, where the colours actu­al­ly spon­ta­neous­ly orig­i­nate. The fact that these colour bands arise and main­tain their form sep­a­rat­ed by vari­able and move­able dis­tances (i.e. dif­fer­ing refrac­tive angles) means that the blue band is not pro­duced by the ‘oth­er half’ of the same light that is behind the red band. This is only incom­pe­tent­ly claimed as proven by the arti­fi­cial­ly formed scam spec­trum. The scam spec­trum also hides, or makes hard to dis­crim­i­nate, the fact that the green stripe is mere­ly the result of the bring­ing togeth­er of the spon­ta­neous blue and the yel­low stripes, and that it actu­al­ly replaces these if the bands are com­pressed fur­ther. These two facts do not read­i­ly sug­gest a uni­form expla­na­tion that is “much the same” as the math­e­mat­ics put for­ward by New­ton, or any oth­er refrac­tion the­o­ry. The ‘rain­bow spec­trum’ is not cre­at­ed by one uni­fied beam of light being split into colours, but from two dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppo­site, sep­a­rate beams of already coloured light being brought togeth­er by reduc­ing what sep­a­rates them to where they com­bine to cre­ate the oth­er­wise non-exis­tent green colour. A sta­t­ic, ‘dif­fer­en­tial refrac­tion’ applied in a con­tin­u­ous­ly vari­able way to explain these colours, is not an option.

    This first exam­ple has the light going through the prism and the colours being observed, reflect­ed on a sur­face. It is also pos­si­ble to cre­ate the scam ‘rain­bow spec­trum’ by observ­ing the colour bands direct­ly through the prism. If you look at a bright win­dow, through a prism side­ways, you will notice the colour bands on either side of the win­dow, along the line of refrac­tion. Now we can see the rea­son for a con­cept like refrac­tion, when we twist the prism back and forth and see the dra­mat­ic nar­row­ing and broad­en­ing of the light image of the win­dow. This mea­sur­able, appar­ent­ly con­tin­u­ous­ly vari­able phe­nom­e­non is the basis of con­cepts of refrac­tion, and there­fore of dif­fer­en­tial refrac­tion, and it is this that allows us to pro­duce a sec­ond ver­sion of Newton’s Scam Spec­trum. If you twist the prism far enough, you reduce the light of the win­dow to where the yel­low part of the red band meets the blue band and — voila! — you have the ‘rain­bow spec­trum’, down the line of refrac­tion.

    But there are some prob­lems here…. Except at extremes, when you broad­en or shrink the win­dow image, the colour bands remain unal­tered to any vis­i­ble extent. This at least sug­gests that they orig­i­nate after the light is bent. They mere­ly move and fol­low the light/dark con­trast line. When brought togeth­er, both bands move towards the nar­row angle of the prism, but the red one moves much more quick­ly and ‘catch­es up’ with the blue. They remain unal­tered until reach­ing the scam spec­trum, when they begin to over­lap or inter­sect, with the yel­low and blue stripes chang­ing to green, until they merge and are replaced by one green stripe. Only now do the colour bands begin to shrink, but not equal­ly. Orange and indi­go stripes dis­ap­pear first, with red, green and vio­let dis­ap­pear­ing togeth­er as the light is choked off. (note: not one after the oth­er as required by ‘dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cies’)

    Fur­ther­more, the colour bands have the abil­i­ty to move in two dif­fer­ent direc­tions, or at dif­fer­ent speeds, with­in them­selves. Let me explain. There is a small shelf edge pro­ject­ing into the win­dow view on the red band side, and this shows the iden­ti­cal red band as the side of the win­dow, but much short­er and pro­ject­ed about one and a half band widths into the win­dow, at the end of the shelf. Now as you tilt the prism to shrink the win­dow, this shelf pro­jec­tion shrinks in accord with refrac­tion, until about three colour band widths from the blue band, it dis­ap­pears into the over­all edge. But through­out this entire span, the small red band has been fol­low­ing the shrink­ing shelf, mov­ing back­wards into the main edge red band while the whole moves for­ward. The math­e­mat­ics of ‘dif­fer­en­tial refrac­tion’ can­not accom­mo­date these dif­fer­ent colour appear­ances, dis­ap­pear­ances and move­ments.

    Prisms cer­tain­ly should be accord­ed much more hon­est, inter­est­ed study. Anoth­er way of pro­duc­ing Newton’s Scam Spec­trum requires a bit of set-up but is, I think, worth the inter­est­ing results.

    Take flat black and flat white paint, mix equal­ly to paint grey a pole 2 inch­es wide and 5 feet high. Paint a piece of card­board 2x5 feet flat black and a piece 2x3 feet flat white (it’s rel­a­tive dimen­sions and not actu­al mea­sure­ments that mat­ter). Stand the grey pole in front of the black board in bright light, and look at it through the prism side­ways. You will see the clear­est “rain­bow spec­trum” down the line of the pole. There are two ways of show­ing this to be a ver­sion of Newton’s Scam Spec­trum. To do the first you put the white board over the low­er half of the black, and look through the prism; sud­den­ly at the white bor­der the blue band turns to red and the red band to blue, con­tin­u­ing down the line of refrac­tion. So we have the remark­able anachro­nism of Newton’s Scam Spec­trum cheek to jowl in the same refrac­tive con­text with a com­plete ‘invert­ed spec­trum’, with red meet­ing vio­let in the mid­dle! Plac­ing the white just to the right or to the left of the pole pro­duces an appar­ent ‘com­plete spec­trum’ of either two red bands or two blue bands… clear­ly we are deal­ing with two sep­a­rate colour bands capa­ble of inde­pen­dent manip­u­la­tion (always in rela­tion to rel­a­tive dark/light con­trast), and not a rigid ‘dif­fer­en­tial refrac­tion ana­lyz­ing colours in a con­tin­u­ous­ly vari­able way from a sin­gle uni­fied beam of light’.

    The trick to Newton’s Scam Spec­trum in this case is the nar­row­ness of the pole. Sta­ple a sheet of writ­ing paper to the pole and you will see the colour bands sep­a­rat­ed.

    The spon­ta­neous cre­ation of colour in a prism is repeat­ed­ly seen to be more close­ly relat­ed to rel­a­tive dark/light con­trasts than to either refrac­tion or any nec­es­sary red – blue con­tin­u­um. The change of colour from blue to red down the line of refrac­tion, mere­ly because the back­ground changes from rel­a­tive­ly dark to rel­a­tive­ly light, shows up as lies all the math­e­mat­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient con­cepts of pris­mat­ic colour pro­duc­tion put for­ward by New­ton and his idol­iz­ers. The fact that the blue band abuts the red one on the same line of refrac­tion is also absolute proof that, far from being parts of a right­ful­ly belong­ing togeth­er ‘rain­bow spec­trum’, the colour bands are indi­rect­ly relat­ed to each oth­er at best. This shows (if pre­vi­ous evi­dence didn’t) the absur­di­ty of there being any pos­si­bil­i­ty of refrac­tion, dif­fer­en­tial or oth­er­wise, in the direct pro­duc­tion of these phe­nom­e­na of colour. Even the left-right ori­en­ta­tion of the colour bands (usu­al­ly red-rel­a­tive­ly thick­er part of prism, blue-rel­a­tive­ly thin­ner when direct­ly per­ceived; and the reverse when seen reflect­ed on a sur­face) shows itself to be inde­pen­dent of the refrac­tive angle when the dark/light con­trast is reversed down the angle of refrac­tion. The only imme­di­ate­ly dis­cernible refrac­tive rela­tion­ship is prob­a­bly their width. There is every rea­son to note that the colours occur after the light is refract­ed in the con­text of rel­a­tive bright/dark con­trasts, and only in that sense ‘because’ of refrac­tion.

    Final­ly, and less explic­it­ly, by twist­ing around a prism in size­able bright light, the ‘rain­bow spec­trum’ can be arti­fi­cial­ly pro­duced and pro­ject­ed onto sur­faces, rep­re­sent­ed by at least three exam­ples. One dupli­cates the win­dow method, with the colour bands sep­a­rat­ed by a bright spot that is reduced by twist­ing the prism until the bands pro­duce the made up ‘spec­trum’. Anoth­er has the colour bands sep­a­rat­ed by a bright spot vis­i­ble on a card near the prism, but reduc­ing in size until 8–10 feet away (in this exam­ple) the colour bands inter­sect or over­lap and a ‘spec­trum’ appears. The third pro­ject­ed scam spec­trum traces back to the nine­ty degree angle of the prism, but shows no bright spot. The colour bands are aligned on either side of the right angle and this is cer­tain­ly a pro­jec­tive ver­sion of the nar­row pole effect.

    These are the few meth­ods I have been able to attempt, and clum­si­ly but defin­i­tive­ly record; these could be struc­tured with more pre­cise mea­sure­ments, and I’m sure there are oth­er ways to arti­fi­cial­ly pro­duce the row of colours. Again, every ‘rain­bow colour spec­trum’ seen asso­ci­at­ed with a prism can be resolved into the actu­al­ly exist­ing, sep­a­rate­ly and spon­ta­neous­ly aris­ing, red band and blue band. These arise at oppo­site sides of big­ger or small­er bod­ies of light, adja­cent to rel­a­tive dark­ness. The light involved in the red side of Newton’s Scam Spec­trum is not involved in the cre­ation of the blue side, and green is only pro­duced through prisms by com­bin­ing the pre-exist­ing coloured light bands.

    Fur­ther­more…
    It should be not­ed that the ‘invert­ed spec­trum’ com­press­es to pro­duce a magen­ta (or ‘red-pur­ple’) stripe that replaces the red and vio­let stripes, exact­ly as the oth­er­wise non-exis­tent green replaces the blue and yel­low stripes. Any physics of pris­mat­ic colour rela­tion­ships, that is not fan­ta­sy, will have to address pairs of spon­ta­neous colours occur­ring in two sep­a­rate con­texts, plus four appar­ent­ly derived from their com­bin­ing. The dog­ma of a pris­mat­ic, con­tin­u­ous­ly vari­able ‘sev­en colours of the rain­bow spec­trum’, with every­thing derived from it, have been prej­u­di­cial­ly made up by a cult of per­son­al­i­ties for math­e­mat­i­cal con­ve­nience and easy, sug­ges­tive sales­man­ship, and do not rep­re­sent hon­est obser­va­tion, let alone sound­ly report­ed inves­tiga­tive sci­ence.

    HONEST OBSERVATION
    The clear fact is that there can be no actu­al mean­ing to the inces­sant­ly pro­claimed supe­ri­or­i­ty of the ‘objec­tive’ over the ‘sub­jec­tive’. All human con­scious­ness occurs either through the dis­ap­pear­ance of any exter­nal stim­u­lus into the human phys­i­ol­o­gy, or through strict­ly inter­nal stim­u­la­tion…. Regard­less, the actu­al per­cep­tion is sub­jec­tive, and the only mean­ing­ful dis­crim­i­na­tion is between the true and the false, in that the con­scious­ness is relat­ed to its appro­pri­ate con­text. For exam­ple, ‘sub­jec­tive’ and ‘objec­tive’ are claimed to be sci­en­tif­ic descrip­tions of the two con­texts with­in which pris­mat­ic colour can be expe­ri­enced. The hon­est obser­va­tion­al report of these phe­nom­e­na is that they are the ‘direct­ly per­ceived’ and the ‘seen reflect­ed’; that is, they are two visu­al con­texts that can­not be pro­claimed as one being supe­ri­or to the oth­er. They are each sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ences in dif­fer­ent con­texts. Sup­pos­ed­ly ‘objec­tive machines’ and ‘objec­tive exper­i­ments’ are exclu­sive­ly the prod­uct of, and assessed by, the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ences and prej­u­dices of their cre­ators, and only hide this sub­jec­tiv­i­ty behind a com­plex array of assump­tions and manip­u­la­tions that are any­thing but ‘objec­tive’, and are mere­ly pro­claimed to be.
    The first issue in con­sid­er­ing light and colour is a clear descrip­tion of what humans are con­scious of when these are per­ceived, expressed in liv­ing terms avail­able to unprej­u­diced com­mon sense. One way of doing this is to note the indis­putable fact that the light and colour we are con­scious of can­not be the light and colour that dis­ap­pears into the stim­u­la­tion of the phys­i­cal sense. That what is pre­sent­ed to con­scious­ness is inde­pen­dent of exter­nal phys­i­cal­i­ty is also shown by the light and colour hazi­ly per­ceived in dreams, or inten­si­fied into visions and hal­lu­ci­na­tions. The only dif­fer­ence between ‘awake’ and ‘asleep’ per­cep­tions, espe­cial­ly when the dream con­scious­ness is inten­si­fied into visions and hal­lu­ci­na­tions, is that exter­nal­ly stim­u­lat­ed light and colour show expe­ri­ences that are close­ly cor­re­lat­ed with phys­i­cal laws, while dreams and visions show no such neces­si­ty. It is clear that it is the form of stim­u­la­tion that dif­fers, not the inher­ent char­ac­ter of the light and colour con­scious­ly per­ceived. These facts have been dis­hon­est­ly exploit­ed by ‘New­to­ni­ans’ to pro­claim any colours not in accord with their scam spec­trum, as well as the dis­cor­dant abrupt colour tran­si­tions and gaps, to be sub­jec­tive — pure­ly phys­i­o­log­i­cal and imag­i­nary. The dual nature of what every­one is lim­it­ed to being con­scious of (includ­ing ‘strict­ly objec­tive sci­en­tists’) shows no inher­ent need for the light and colour actu­al­ly per­ceived to be them­selves phys­i­cal, or else they would have to obey phys­i­cal laws through­out. Like­wise, what the human self is, who is actu­al­ly con­scious of light and colour, is a ‘ghost in the machine’ direct­ly inac­ces­si­ble to mechan­i­cal mate­ri­al­ism, although direct­ly acces­si­ble to every self-con­scious human.
    It’s also cru­cial to keep in mind the dif­fer­ence between arith­metic, geom­e­try and kine­mat­ics (the­o­ret­i­cal or pure math) and mechan­ics and oth­er applied math. Sim­i­lar to the con­scious­ness of light and colour, the realm of pure math­e­mat­ics does not need to cor­re­spond to phys­i­cal laws. Num­bers do not phys­i­cal­ly exist, but can be applied to any­thing and every­thing. There are no phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na that are exact­ly math­e­mat­i­cal tri­an­gles or cir­cles, etc. One and two dimen­sion­al math­e­mat­i­cal real­i­ties, read­i­ly acces­si­ble to con­scious manip­u­la­tion, can­not embrace or rep­re­sent phys­i­cal­i­ty… (the exam­ples are myr­i­ad). Like dreams and visions, pure math­e­mat­ics may or may not be applic­a­ble to phys­i­cal real­i­ty, and only gains exter­nal mean­ing when inte­grat­ed into exter­nal­ly expe­ri­enced and mea­sured facts. There is no inher­ent need for pure math itself to be phys­i­cal. The chaos brought about by the dog­ma that only math­e­mat­ics pro­vides a reli­able real­i­ty, so that it is not nec­es­sary to care­ful­ly dis­crim­i­nate between the absolute­ly sep­a­rate forms of pure and applied math, is basi­cal­ly the con­tent of the­o­ret­i­cal­ly ‘proven’ mechan­i­cal mate­ri­al­ism, includ­ing most of light the­o­ry. And of course, it is the ‘ghost in the machine’ who is doing all this math.
    As many points of view as pos­si­ble must be brought to bear on any light-form or math­e­mat­i­cal-form seem­ing­ly relat­ed to our top­ic, in order that the phys­i­cal/non-phys­i­cal bound­ary be clear­ly respect­ed.

    PRISMATIC COLOUR
    The fol­low­ing list­ing of per­ti­nent obser­va­tions is based on the prism being held side­ways, with the refrac­tive angle ver­ti­cal. The light source has been the sun through dou­ble pane win­dow glass using a 90 degree glass prism. It is not pre­sent­ed in any par­tic­u­lar order. This is only a pre­lim­i­nary review, and I encour­age every­one to get a prism and search through the many inter­est­ing and infor­ma­tive colour details, both direct­ly per­ceived and seen reflect­ed, and under many dif­fer­ent con­di­tions of light, shape, angle and inten­si­ty of con­trast. It is fair­ly obvi­ous where the sophis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment of an optics lab could add pre­cise mea­sure­ments of chang­ing widths, dif­fer­ent speeds, angu­lar occur­rences, degree of con­trast, etc.

    1) Four colours (red and yel­low; blue and vio­let) self-evi­dent­ly spon­ta­neous­ly arise inde­pen­dent­ly, appar­ent­ly always in oppo­si­tion, as repeat­ed­ly described above and with a few addi­tion­al occur­rences men­tioned below.
    2) Four colours arise appar­ent­ly through com­bi­na­tion, with orange or indi­go occur­ring in a sta­ble way between the red/yellow or the blue/violet and show­ing no ten­den­cy to expand or replace the spon­ta­neous colours. The oth­er two colours, green and magen­ta, are patent­ly dynam­ic, occur­ring only when the yellow/blue or red/violet stripes move togeth­er – fur­ther­more replac­ing these. When these have been replaced, the red-green-vio­let and the yel­low-magen­ta-blue pat­terns remain sta­ble in basic pat­tern (but not immutable), mov­ing as units across the field of the prism until they are choked off or blurred out togeth­er at the edges (note- not one after the oth­er).
    3) Two brighter colours, yel­low and blue, com­bine to pro­duce the dark­er green, while on the oth­er hand two dark­er colours, red and vio­let, com­bine to pro­duce the brighter magen­ta. The for­mer is only pro­duced from the ‘rain­bow spec­trum’, the lat­ter from the ‘invert­ed spec­trum’.
    4) The pure­ly rel­a­tive nature of the appear­ances. No mat­ter whether bril­liant white against dark black, or mere­ly dark­er and brighter grey, the bands appear the same, mere­ly brighter or dark­er. And if the rel­a­tive posi­tions of the darker/brighter inter­face are reversed, so are the colour bands regard­less of the angle of refrac­tion.
    5) The ‘dis­ap­pear­ing’ cen­tral body of light. Where does that ‘go’? It cer­tain­ly doesn’t notice­ably bright­en the colours.
    6) A rod or slot in a card placed to about up a 15 degree angle from hor­i­zon­tal shows no colour edge, while moved to about 20–25 degrees shows def­i­nite edge-effect colour bands. On the oth­er hand, a cir­cu­lar dark object in bright light shows colour bands almost to the 90 degree poles, with the colour bands shrink­ing in width around the top and bot­tom.
    7) The dif­fer­ent move­ments of the colour bands as they are brought togeth­er need to be mea­sured against the prism angles they are mov­ing through, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ‘retreat­ing’ edge mov­ing into a larg­er field because of slow­er speed. In gen­er­al, both con­texts of view­ing show the red band to be more mobile than the blue band, despite reversed rela­tion­ship to prism thick­ness.
    8) When direct­ly per­ceived, the red band can be seen to be shone through com­plete­ly from behind, but the blue band has the vio­let stripe clear­ly in front of dark­ness, with the indi­go at the dark­ness edge and only the blue clear­ly shone through from behind. Vio­let over dark­ness is eas­i­ly shown in the direct­ly per­ceived case, by a wood­en rod against a bright sky – the wood pat­tern is vis­i­ble through the vio­let; and in the seen reflect­ed case by insert­ing a rod into the side of the blue band – it is not notice­able behind the vio­let stripe. As against this, the degree to which, and how, the dark edge is pro­ject­ed in front of the light to pro­duce red needs to be care­ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed and con­sid­ered. This is also required to grasp the sig­nif­i­cance of the rever­sal of the prism-angle/­colour gen­er­a­tion when the colours are direct­ly per­ceived com­pared to being seen reflect­ed on a sur­face.
    Because of this rela­tion­ship of the colour bands to the way the refract­ed light is bent, the ‘red band’ is more prop­er­ly called the ‘dark refract­ed into a light field band’, or light band; and a ‘light refract­ed into a dark field band’, or dark band for the blue band.
    9) For a cou­ple of cen­turies it has been known that pro­ject­ing a dark stripe in a bright field through the prism pro­duces a reflect­ed ver­sion of the ‘invert­ed spec­trum’ shown by the direct­ly per­ceived grey pole effect not­ed above. In fact I use their term, as it can only be prop­er­ly called ‘reversed colour bands’, obvi­ous­ly caused by the com­par­a­tive rever­sal of the dark/light inter­face.
    10) The ‘rain­bow spec­trum’ pro­duced by a prism is clear­ly not the result of con­tin­u­ous vari­a­tion across a uni­fied field. The sharp breaks between the colours, as well as the colours result­ing from the com­bin­ing of pre-exist­ing colours and occur­ring in ‘non-spec­trum’ con­texts, need to be stud­ied as basic qual­i­ties; they are not, like the scam spec­trum, demon­stra­ble illu­sions but are only pro­claimed to be as they don’t fit the inad­e­quate, con­tin­u­ous­ly vari­able spec­trum fan­ta­sy. The scam spec­trum is at most a con­ve­nient way of study­ing aspects of the colour bands in prox­im­i­ty. The claim that this made-up row of colours sheds irrefutable light on all oth­er forms of spon­ta­neous colour gen­er­a­tion is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly incom­pe­tent, and winds up being sup­port­ed by cir­cu­lar argu­ment or ‘author­i­ta­tive dis­missal’ of dis­agree­able facts. All colour phe­nom­e­na need to be care­ful­ly described and stud­ied in their own con­texts before any inter­re­la­tions can be con­sid­ered.

    The phe­nom­e­na of colours occur­ring in rela­tion to prisms have cer­tain­ly not been care­ful­ly described and stud­ied in their own con­text, as “one that shall a lit­tle con­sid­er it” soon dis­cov­ers. Fur­ther obser­va­tions appear to become more com­plex and lead to the lim­its where the colours can be direct­ly relat­ed to the prism. Two things need to be re-stat­ed and car­ried clear­ly in mind through all obser­va­tions and con­sid­er­a­tions. One is that per­ceived light and per­ceived pure math­e­mat­ics have no inher­ent need to relate to the phys­i­cal – indeed, with math­e­mat­ics the phys­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty is as basic as the quite cor­rect math­e­mat­i­cal fact the one thing can equal anoth­er. In phys­i­cal real­i­ty, one thing can only ‘equal’ anoth­er if cer­tain facts and con­texts are ignored or not noticed. Light is famous as a pro­duc­er, or instru­ment, of illu­sions; so, again, as many points of view as pos­si­ble must be brought to bear on any light-form or math­e­mat­i­cal-form seem­ing­ly relat­ed to our top­ic, in order that the phys­i­cal/non-phys­i­cal bound­ary be clear­ly respect­ed.
    The sec­ond thing is that straight­for­ward obser­va­tions and con­sid­er­a­tions, that can be read­i­ly test­ed by any­one, need to ground ini­tial descrip­tion and study. So far this work has attempt­ed not to go past obser­va­tions that would have been avail­able to rich peo­ple in 1700, and more broad­ly avail­able since. It is this fact plus the obvi­ous fail­ure to find any actu­al unde­ni­ably spon­ta­neous ‘spec­trum’, that shows the sci­en­tif­ic inad­e­qua­cy of Newton’s sug­ges­tive enthu­si­asm; and the lack of even ten­ta­tive due-dili­gence as to the valid­i­ty of orig­i­nal claims (objec­tors have been mere­ly attacked, not con­front­ed with repeat­able, in con­text obser­va­tions such as giv­en here) reveals the cult of per­son­al­i­ties that has laid claim to this field. Their chaos of truth mixed with lies and mis­ap­pre­hen­sions has been made dif­fi­cult to untan­gle.

    To con­tin­ue the list­ing:
    11) The grey pole effect also occurs in a seen reflect­ed ver­sion, if a grey strip is used on the face of the prism. I have used a 4–5mm wide strip of clear tape; the aim is to use a width that gives a full ‘invert­ed spec­trum’. Then, black­ing out var­i­ous parts of the bright sides dupli­cates exact­ly the grey pole colour phe­nom­e­na described pre­vi­ous­ly as direct­ly per­ceived (sub­jec­tive), only in a seen reflect­ed form (objec­tive). This includes the scam spec­trum direct­ly adja­cent to the ‘invert­ed spec­trum’, down the line of refrac­tion.
    12) When per­ceived direct­ly, the colour bands main­tain an essen­tial­ly uni­form focus and con­fig­u­ra­tion as the prism is moved far­ther away from the eye. Where­as, in the seen reflect­ed bands the colours, pat­terns and focus change as the prism approach­es the reflec­tive sur­face, until about 5cm. from it (in this exam­ple) the colours have fad­ed to obscu­ri­ty.
    13) Direct­ly per­ceived, colours do not arise when the light is blocked by a rod or a slit in a card when placed between the eye and the prism, at any arm-length dis­tance. Colours do arise from the light going to be reflect­ed, when it is blocked after it leaves the prism and before the reflec­tive sur­face. This fact of post-prism colour gen­er­a­tion seems to be only observed by using the reflect­ed colour pat­tern that has the colours on either side of a wide white cen­tre (bright spots test­ed, that show no colours, do not show colours from the blocked light). It occurs both with the ‘rain­bow spec­trum’ (slot cut in card), or with the ‘invert­ed spec­trum’ (using a rod). These are placed against the prism as the light leaves it, and moved towards the reflec­tive sur­face. Both these meth­ods show bright colours reflect­ed when near the prism, with them fad­ing until about 50cm from the prism (in this exam­ple) they are hard­ly notice­able.
    14) It is sig­nif­i­cant that the plane-sur­face prisms give strong, var­ied colour pat­terns, while curve-sur­face prisms (lens­es) pro­duce faint, fuzzy colours, if at all. The clear­est colour pat­terns I have so far noticed for lens­es occurs by using a rod after the light has left the lens. This shows faint, fuzzy colour edges from about 8cm before the focal point to the same after. Despite clear refrac­tive sim­i­lar­i­ties, the cur­va­ture appears to at least approach one lim­it of pris­mat­ic colour.
    15) When a grid of rods (I used four) is placed in the direct­ly per­ceived con­text, and the prism twist­ed to com­press the colour bands, a sta­ble colour array of blue/magenta/green/m/g/m/g/m/g/yellow is pro­duced. This remains sta­ble until edges are approached, and occurs in both visu­al con­texts with colour reversed.
    16) There is no doubt that chem­i­cal effects are asso­ci­at­ed with the vio­let and heat effects with the red. How they dis­ap­pear or inte­grate togeth­er into magen­ta is hard to imag­ine and needs to be traced with appro­pri­ate instru­ments and chem­i­cal tests.

    THE TWO VISUAL CONTEXTS
    Sim­i­lar­i­ties
    Rela­tion­ships that remain con­sis­tent between both visu­al con­texts, (i.e. direct­ly per­ceived and seen reflect­ed prism colours) include:
    a) colours ini­ti­ate at around 15 degree angle from square to the line of refrac­tion.
    b) the rela­tion­ship that gives the two ‘spec­trums’; i.e. the ‘rain­bow spec­trum’ always results from a bright cen­tre with dark edges, and the ‘invert­ed spec­trum’ from a dark cen­tre with bright edges.
    c) the vio­let stripe can be shown to occur over dark­ness, with the blue stripe and the entire red band, shone through from behind.
    d) both per­spec­tives are sub­ject to the re-bend­ing of the light as it leaves the prism. e) the rela­tion­ship that gives green is always the ‘rain­bow spec­trum’, with magen­ta from the ‘inverse spec­trum’.
    f) I have not even tried to esti­mate the degree of light/dark con­trast required to ini­ti­ate the spon­ta­neous colours – it would be dra­mat­ic if it were not basi­cal­ly the same for both per­spec­tives. The fact that only one strip of trans­par­ent tape ini­ti­ates colour effects shows that no great degree of con­trast is required. On the oth­er hand, abrupt­ness of con­trast and over­all illu­mi­na­tion of the field do seem involved.
    Except for the left-right colour rever­sals involved, oth­er sim­i­lar­i­ties are:
    the sta­ble red-green-vio­let and blue-magen­ta-yel­low pat­terns;
    the sta­ble magen­ta-green grid pat­tern;
    the greater mobil­i­ty of the red band;
    the 15–20 degree ini­ti­a­tion of colour along a rod and the bands’ ‘sur­round­ing’ a cir­cu­lar object;
    the entire range of grey pole effects.
    the inabil­i­ty to expand the orange or indi­go stripes except as all stripes expand and blur at extreme angles in some con­texts.
    Using both visu­al con­texts allow for manip­u­la­tions and pre­con­di­tions that pro­duce the fol­low­ing incom­plete list of rows of colours:
    Rain­bow
    Reversed rain­bow
    Inverse rain­bow
    Reversed inverse rain­bow
    Red-green-vio­let
    Blue-magen­ta-yel­low
    Mul­ti­ple magen­ta-green
    Red band-red band
    Blue band-blue band

    Dif­fer­ences
    The clas­sic dif­fer­ence, noticed by every­one, is the rever­sal of the colours in their rela­tion­ship to the thick­ness of the prism
    Anoth­er dif­fer­ence is the pro­duc­tion of the colour bands after the light has left the prism – it occurs with the seen reflect­ed con­text but not with the direct­ly per­ceived con­text.
    It should be not­ed that the colour bands, when the rod is placed after the prism, are strong close to the prism; while the colour bands aris­ing when the rod is placed before the prism and direct­ly per­ceived are weak­est close to the prism. The seen reflect­ed colours also change more with prism twist­ing, than shown by the direct­ly seen pat­terns,
    The focus and con­fig­u­ra­tion of the bands change when the prism is moved towards or away from the reflec­tive sur­face, but not the eye.
    The dif­fer­ences in trans­mit­ted light inten­si­ty (strong-seen reflect­ed/weak-direct­ly per­ceived) seem to be con­sid­ered insignif­i­cant, but I’ve yet to see it explored.

    LIMITS
    The fact that the colours only spon­ta­neous­ly arise as edge or con­trast effects shows that their occur­rence is lim­it­ed to a rela­tion­ship or inter­ac­tion at inter­faces between rel­a­tive light and dark. And that this rela­tion­ship or inter­ac­tion is also lim­it­ed to the light/dark con­trast being sub­ject to refrac­tive bend­ing is shown by the fact that if the light is reflect­ed inter­nal­ly in the prism so that the angle is reversed on exit­ing, no edge colours appear.
    The light/dark con­trast need not be absolute, but where prov­able unil­lu­mi­nat­ed dark­ness occurs, the indi­go band is direct­ly per­ceived at the con­trast line and the vio­let colour can be seen as illu­mi­na­tion in front of the absolute dark­ness. For the same phe­nom­e­non to be occur­ring on the red side requires that the absolute dark­ness is bent in front of the illu­mi­nat­ed side to give red colour, with the orange stripe being at the pro­ject­ed light/dark con­trast line. These rela­tion­ships also show how the rever­sal of direct­ly per­ceived com­pared to seen reflect­ed colour occurs, for if on the vio­let side the bright­ness pre­cedes the dark­ness to the reflec­tive sur­face, then the reflect­ed bright­ness is seen through the fol­low­ing dark­ness to give red. The pre­ced­ing dark­ness on the direct­ly per­ceived red side strikes the reflec­tive sur­face first to be seen behind the fol­low­ing dark­ness to give vio­let
    The colour of each of the con­trast effect bands must be only an inter­ac­tion of bright­ness and dark­ness after it leaves the prism or colours would be the same in both con­texts. It is the rever­sal of this dark/light inter­ac­tion that pro­duces the colour rever­sals that are evi­dent. Fur­ther, the rever­sal requires that the dark­ness must be divert­ed as well as the light, and this shows that the colours gen­er­ate in the same way in both con­texts.
    Sim­ply put, it is a light/dark rela­tion­ship that exits the prism, not colour.
    The blue band, direct­ly per­ceived, has the bright­ness divert­ed in front of the dark­er ground to give the blue band, with the same side hav­ing the bright­ness strik­ing the reflec­tive sur­face before the dark­ness, so that the bright­ness is seen through the fol­low­ing dark­ness to give the red band when seen or record­ed reflect­ed. On the red side direct­ly per­ceived, the dark­ness is divert­ed in front of, and so seen through to the bright­ness to give the red band, with the seen reflect­ed con­text hav­ing the dark­ness strik­ing the reflec­tive sur­face first and so seen through the fol­low­ing bright­ness to give the blue band. These are the ini­tial lim­its to the occur­rence of pris­mat­ic colour.
    The fact that already coloured lights inter­act with one anoth­er makes the occur­rence of green and magen­ta like­ly a lim­it of pris­mat­ic colour, espe­cial­ly as these can be seen to occur with the bring­ing togeth­er of the spon­ta­neous coloured stripes – in both visu­al con­texts. On the oth­er hand, once com­plete the green and magen­ta stripes behave along with the remain­ing spon­ta­neous colours, includ­ing forms of dis­ap­pear­ance. The occur­rence of indi­go and orange, appear­ing spon­ta­neous­ly but not near­ly as def­i­nite­ly as the oth­er colours, is not so clear­ly the result of com­bi­na­tion, and needs to be more pre­cise­ly observed.
    Some oth­er lim­its to the pro­duc­tion of pris­mat­ic colour are straight­for­ward, some not so:
    –Colours require a rel­a­tive­ly slight, rel­a­tive­ly abrupt con­trast between brighter and dark­er fields in the refract­ed con­text. Below this no hint of colour occurs.
    –The colours do not occur at right angles to the line of refrac­tion up to about 20 degrees above this, after which they occur through­out the 70 degrees up to the line of refrac­tion.
    –The cur­va­ture of the prism faces is def­i­nite­ly a lim­it­ing fac­tor.
    –The entire phe­nom­e­na in 13) indi­cates a lim­it of colour rela­tion­ship or influ­ence, if not actu­al pro­duc­tion.
    –The width lim­its of the colour bands could well be relat­ed to the spe­cif­ic refrac­tive index and angle of each prism, and needs to be math­e­mat­i­cal­ly described in each case. The width lim­its do spread and become indis­tinct as the bright-dark tran­si­tion is less abrupt.

    It is nec­es­sary to con­sid­er and mea­sure at least these lim­its, sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences to gain a real, record­able, and repeat­able pic­ture.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.