If we only saw in black and white, the entire colour spectrum would appear as various shades of grey. When we’d go around painting things, we’d be painting in various shades of grey, obviously. If we became suddenly colour-visioned, would everything appear in awful, gaudy colours?
Ahh yes. I’ve wondered about the same thing. How 'bout this, what if what I see as red looks like blue to you, but since you’ve always seen it as blue it looks normal but If I saw thru your eyes, what I would see is blue instead of red. Maybe everyone’s mind interprets colors differently but we’ll never know because that’s the only way we can see.
Hard to explain.
I suppose a similar scenario is if we were able to see infrared and ultraviolet light. (I think.)
I’m reminded of “Pleasantville”…
Doc’trauma, i know exactly what you mean. I’ve wondered the same thing.
about the OP, A sudden change from black and white to color would probably be totally frightening!
The paintings we had made would be interesting; if we did not perceive colour, we might pick a mineral that looks black, but is in fact dark blue, so when we suddenly gain the gift of colour vision, rather than being an accurate picture of the world, or a black-and-white representation, the painting would look like Delftware.
Exactly, if we only saw in black and white then gained the ability to see in colour, all our paintings would looke completely wrong!
It didn’t seem to bother Dorthy.
Just ask Pat Buchannan.
(c’mon, you were thinking it.)
Yes, although it is unlikely that they would be gaudy and riotous; we would have no reason to choose more than a very dark pigment and a very pale one, then mix the two to the desired shade of (apparent) grey, all of the greys would become shades of a single colour (very probably brown, since most common earth pigments are brown) when we got colour vision.
I remember reading Oliver Sacks’ Island of the Colorblind (http://www.oliversacks.com/bookpages/island/islandfrm.htm ) several years ago, and was fascinated when he observed that those who could not see color were able to pick out textures and patterns that “normally” sighted people hardly noticed. IIRC, Sacks ventured that color is actually distracting to us, and because we are so distracted, we tend to miss out on a whole world of beauty. I came away from the book feeling that it was not the colorblind who were disabled, but rather the full-visioned folks.
This only sort-of relates to the OP. Sacks’ words have me wondering whether or not we’d find the sudden appearance of color overwhelming to the eye.
Portwest–I’ve read that book, too. After talking to some achromatopic people (who also have low acuity in addition to colorblindness), he noticed that they used more subtle means of creating patterns, involving reflectance, IIRC. For instance, he mentioned a woman who knit a brown sweater with purple accents. To a person with color vision, the pattern wasn’t too noticable, but the greyscale values of the two colors were different enough to produce a pleasing pattern.
Actually I just met someone who claimed to only see in black and white. He said it was a genetic condition or something.
Oh yeah – wasn’t that cool?
I remember that I felt somewhat inadequate at some points, what with my common, run-of-the-mill color vision.
From Calvin and Hobbes a few years back:
Calvin: How come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
Dad: Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It’s just that the world was black and white then. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
C: But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?
D: Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.
C: But… But how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn’t their paints have been shades of gray back then?
D: Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the '30s.
C: So why didn’t old black and white photos turn color too?
D: Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?
My grandfather was monochromatic. He was also an artist who worked in colors. Yes, his hues were often “off”, but they also somehow managed to work specifically because the values were very well chosen.
There are pictures like this, aren’t there? Squash up the spectrum a bit and display uv as something else, and you see flowers have lots of pretty patterns you never noticed before.
Presumably near ir would be the same, but you only ever see pure ir pictures to show heat.