Psychology by Robert S. Woodworth (intellectual books to read .TXT) 📖

the primary pigments of the painter's art, but for the elementary sensations. Our knowledge of physics and painting, indeed, is likely to lead us astray. Sensations are our responses to the physical stimulus, and the psychological question is, what fundamental responses we make to this class of stimuli.

Suppose, without knowing anything of pigments or of the physics of light, we got together a collection of bits of color of every shade and tint, in order to see what we could discover about visual sensations. Leaving aside the question of elements for the moment, we might first try to classify the bits of color. We could sort out a pile of reds, a pile of blues, a pile of browns, a pile of grays, etc., but the piles would shade off one into another. The salient fact about colors is the gradual transition from one to another. We can arrange them in series better than we can classify them. They can be serially arranged in three different ways, according to brightness or intensity, according to color-tone, and according to saturation.

The intensity series runs from light to dark. We can arrange such a series composed entirely of reds or blues or any other one color; or we can arrange the whole collection of bits of color into a single light-dark series. It is not always easy to decide whether a given shade of one color is lighter or darker than a given shade of a different color; but in a rough way, at least, every bit of whatever color would have its place in the single intensity series. An intensity series can, of course, be arranged in any other sense as well as in sight.

The color-tone series is best arranged from a collection consisting entirely of full or saturated colors. Start the {207} series with any color and put next to this the color that most resembles it in color-tone, i.e., in specific color quality; and so continue, adding always the color that most resembles the one preceding. If we started with red, the next in order might be either a yellowish red or a bluish red. If we took the yellowish red and placed it beside the red, then the next in order would be a still more yellowish red, and the series would run on to yellow and then to greenish yellow, green, bluish green, blue, violet, purple, purplish red, and so back to red. The color-tone series returns upon itself. It is a circular series.

Fig. 33.--The color circle. R, Y, G and B, stand for the colors red, yellow, green and blue. The shaded portion corresponds to the spectrum or rainbow. Complementary colors (see later) lie diametrically opposite to each other on the circumference.

A saturation series runs from full-toned or saturated colors to pale or dull. Since we can certainly say of a pale blue that it is less saturated than a vivid red, etc., we could, theoretically, arrange our whole collection of bits of color in a single saturation series, but our judgment would be very uncertain at many points. The most significant saturation series confine themselves to a single color-tone, {208} and also, as far as possible, to a constant brightness, and extend from the most vivid color sensation obtainable with this color-tone and brightness, through a succession of less and less strongly colored sensations of the same tone and brightness, to a dead gray of the same brightness. Any such saturation series terminates in a neutral gray, which is light or dark to match the rest of the particular saturation series.

White, black and gray, which find no place in the color-tone series, give an intensity series of their own, running from white through light gray and darker and darker gray to black, and any gray in this series may be the zero point in a saturation series of any color-tone.

A three-dimensional diagram of the whole system of visual sensations can be built up in the following way. Taking all the colors of the same degree of brightness, we can arrange the most saturated, in the order of their color-tone, around the circumference of a circle, put a gray of the same brightness at the center of this circle, and then arrange a saturation series for each color-tone extending from the most saturated at the circumference to gray at the center. This would be a two-dimensional diagram for colors having the same brightness. For a greater brightness, we could arrange a similar circle and place it above the first, and for a smaller brightness, a similar circle and place it below the first, and we could thus build up a pile of circles, ranging from the greatest brightness at the top to the least at the bottom. But, as the colors all lose saturation when their brightness is much increased, and also when it is much decreased, we should make the circles smaller and smaller toward either the top or the bottom of the pile, so that our three-dimensional diagram would finally take the form of a double cone, with the most intense white, like that of sunlight, at the upper point, with dead black at the lower point, {209} and with the greatest diameter near the middle brightness, where the greatest saturations can be obtained. The axis of the double cone, extending from brightest white to dead black, would give the series of neutral grays. All the thousands of distinguishable colors, shades and tints, would find places in this scheme.

Fig. 34.--The color cone, described in the text. Instead of a cone, a four-sided pyramid is often used, so as to emphasize the four main colors, red, yellow, green and blue, which are then located at the corners of the base of the pyramid. (Figure text: white, black, R, B, G, Y)

Simpler Forms of the Color Sense

Not every one gets all these sensations. In color-blindness, the system is reduced to one or two dimensions, instead of three. There are two principal forms of color-blindness: total, very uncommon; and red-green blindness, fairly {210} common. The totally color-blind individual sees only white, black, and the various shades of gray. His system of visual sensations is reduced to one dimension, corresponding to the axis of our double cone.

Red-green blindness, very uncommon in women, is present in three or four percent of men. It is not a disease, not curable, not corrected by training, and not associated with any other defect of the eye, or of the brain. It is simply a native peculiarity of the color sense. Careful study shows that the only color sensations of the red-green blind person are blue and yellow, along with white, black and the grays. His color circle reduces to a straight line with yellow at one end and blue at the other. Instead of the color circle, he has a double saturation series, reaching from saturated yellow through duller yellows to gray and thence through dull blues to saturated blue. What appears to the normal eye as red, orange or grass green appears to him as more or less unsaturated yellow; and what appears to the normal eye as greenish blue, violet and purple appears to him as more or less unsaturated blue. His color system can be represented in two dimensions, one for the double saturation series, yellow-gray-blue, and the other for the intensity series, white-gray-black.

Color-blindness, always interesting and not without some practical importance (since the confusions of the color-blind eye might lead to mistaking signals in navigation or railroading), takes on additional significance when we discover the curious fact that every one is color-blind--in certain parts of the retina. The outermost zone of the retina, corresponding to the margin of the field of view, is totally color-blind (or very nearly so), and an intermediate zone, between this and the central area of the retina that sees all the colors, is red-green blind, and delivers only blue and yellow sensations, along with white, black and gray. Take {211} a spot of yellow or blue and move it in from the side of the head into the margin of the field of view and then on towards the center. When it first appears in the margin, it simply appears gray, but when it has come inwards for a certain distance it changes to yellow. If a red or green spot is moved in similarly, it first appears gray, then takes on a faint tinge of yellow, and finally, as it approaches the center of the field of view, appears in its true color. The outer zone gets only black and white, the intermediate zone gets, in addition to these, yellow and blue, and the central area adds red and green (and with them all the colors).

Fig. 35.--Color cones of the retina. F is the fovea, or central area of clearest vision. (Figure text: all colors, white-black & yellow-blue, white-black)

Now as to the question of elements, let us see how far we can go, keeping still to the sensations, without any reference to the stimulus. If a collection of bits of color is presented to a class of students who have not previously studied this matter, with the request that each select those colors that seem to him elementary and not blends, there is practically unanimous agreement on three colors, red, yellow and blue; and there are some votes for green also, but almost none for orange, violet, purple, brown or any other colors. {212} except white and black. That white and black are elementary sensations is made clear by the case of total color-blindness, since in this condition there are no other visual sensations from which white and black could be compounded, and these two differ so completely from each other that it would be impossible to think of white as made up of black, or black of white. Gray, on the other hand, appears like a blend of black and white. In the same way, red-green blindness demonstrates the reality of yellow and blue as elementary sensations, since neither of them could be reduced to a blend of the other with white or black; and there are no other colors present in this form of color vision to serve as possible elements out of which yellow and blue might be compounded. That white, black, yellow and blue are elementary sensations is therefore clear from the study of visual sensations alone; and there are indications that red and green are also elements.

Visual Sensations as Related to the Stimulus

Thus far, we have said nothing of the stimulus that arouses visual sensations. Light, the stimulus, is physically a wave motion, its vibrations succeeding each other at the rate of 500,000000,000000 vibrations, more or less, per second, and moving through space with a speed of 186,000 miles per second. The "wave-length", or distance from the crest of one wave to the crest of the next following, is measured in millionths of a millimeter.

The most important single step ever taken towards a knowledge of the physics of light, and incidentally towards a knowledge of visual sensations, was Newton's analysis of white light into the spectrum. He found that when white light is passed through a prism, it is broken up into all the colors of the rainbow or spectrum. Sunlight consists of a {213} mixture of waves of various lengths. At one end of the spectrum are the long waves (wave-length 760 millionths of a millimeter), at the other end are the short waves (wavelength 390), and in between are waves of every intermediate length, arranged in order from the longest to the shortest. The longest waves give the sensation of red, and the shortest that of violet, a slightly reddish blue.

Outside the limits of the visible spectrum, however, there are waves still longer and shorter, incapable of arousing the retina, though the very long waves, beyond the red, arouse the sensation of warmth from the skin, and the very short waves,