ABSTRACT
Human endeavor with color can be dated back to more than 37,000 years ago to France’s Chauvet cave paintings (pictures) or even more than 40,800 years ago to El Castillo cave paintings along northern Spain’s Cantabrian Sea coast. After a long period of thinking of colors as mixtures of black and white based on the hypothesis of Aristotle (384-322 BC), the foundations of modern color research were laid by Isaac Newton (1642-1727). In 1666, he found that an inverted prism positioned after the first would recombine these colors into achromatic light and a second, noninverted prism was not able to split any of the colored components
obtained after the first prism any further. From his experiments, Newton recognized the relationship between light and color, and also color’s nonobjectivity. However, nowadays we still experience colors through an extremely complex path of physical, chemical, neurological, and mental processes. We prefer to say (or even believe) “the blue sea,” “blue sky,” “green leaves,” and “white wine,” as we still convey the impression that color is a property that these things really possess. As shown on the front inside page, the near-infrared (NIR) photograph “Perfect Snowy Trees” may give one a surreal, ethereal feeling by seeing or believingly seeing the same true colors of the foliages and snow beyond the human visible vision.
