In terms of practicality, measuring color by exact wavelength/frequency rather than names might be the way to go. The argument of "Is the green of my grass the same as yours?" is worn-out. We seem to have a societal agreement that grass IS green. One grass = one wavelength/frequency, a different grass = a slightly different wavelength/frequency. Just to make things even more interesting, there are some cultures that don't have color values for as many colors as we're using. I don't have my Sociolinguistic class material handy, perhaps someone out there has more specific info, but there is a tribe in Africa that has something like 'light' and 'dark' for colors. We would talk about orange, purple, indigo... they would call ALL of them 'dark.' And if I recall correctly, in the Russian language there are two different terms for 'blue' that we make no distinction between in America.
Guess it all comes down to measuring the length of wave/frequency etc that is being shown, and either the person sees it or they don't. I guess you could take it another step and ask them what color term they would use for it, just to see what social conditioning has done to their perception.
don't know if this made a lot of sense, but figured someone else might pick up the ball and run with it.
Slashdot Mirror
In terms of practicality, measuring color by exact wavelength/frequency rather than names might be the way to go. The argument of "Is the green of my grass the same as yours?" is worn-out. We seem to have a societal agreement that grass IS green. One grass = one wavelength/frequency, a different grass = a slightly different wavelength/frequency. Just to make things even more interesting, there are some cultures that don't have color values for as many colors as we're using. I don't have my Sociolinguistic class material handy, perhaps someone out there has more specific info, but there is a tribe in Africa that has something like 'light' and 'dark' for colors. We would talk about orange, purple, indigo... they would call ALL of them 'dark.' And if I recall correctly, in the Russian language there are two different terms for 'blue' that we make no distinction between in America.
Guess it all comes down to measuring the length of wave/frequency etc that is being shown, and either the person sees it or they don't. I guess you could take it another step and ask them what color term they would use for it, just to see what social conditioning has done to their perception.
don't know if this made a lot of sense, but figured someone else might pick up the ball and run with it.