On 23/2/07 21:28, "Chaswe@AOL.COM"
<Chaswe@AOL.COM> wrote:
But does blue have any existence apart from its perception by humans?
Can it in fact really be a substantive? Perhaps a philosopher on the
list knows the answer.
Charles
Whole books on the mystery of ‘colour words.’ Some languages manage
with just three (usually white/black/red); if there is a fourth, it’s
usually ‘blue’ or ‘green.’ Of course, these names are applied to what
we might name from a wider range of colour-words. The research is done
by asking the ‘native’ to point/name a set of standard coloured tiles.
There are many variations even among ‘advanced’ literate language
communities. Russians, I’m told, tend to name as ‘blue’ the tiles that
English would call ‘green.’ So it boils down to statistics rather than
exact categories. You can get answers such as ‘greeny-blue’ or
‘off-pink.’ (Colour perception is related objectively to frequency AND
intensity of light
— and many factors beyond the scope of this email. There are
embedded-dot tests to determine gross ‘errors’ in one’s
colour-perception — often called ‘colour blindness.’) Some ‘primitive’
(i.e., hugely complex!) languages have many distinct words for, e.g.,
shades of yellow that we would simply call ‘yellow,’ perhaps qualified
as ‘yellowish,’ or ‘pale yellow.’ So, don’t expect any easy mappings
between colour-names and which tile we point at.
No evidence that the Greeks were unusually colour-blind! A funnier
explanation of ‘wine-dark sea’ is that Homer was BLIND! The more
sensible explanation for those whose cloth/tin ears/eys retain some
modicum of poetic fancy is:
W. J. Rayment / -- The descriptive phrase
"Wine Dark Sea" first appears in Literature in Homer's
Iliad.
It helps describe a scene in which the grieving Achilles looks out to
sea just after the funeral of his beloved Patroclus. The phrase is also
used four times in the Odyssey.
Homer had a gift for adjectival description, and here he evokes an
image that has carried on for millenia in literature and imagination.
Of course, we must remember that Homer composed his verses in
Greek and ancient Greek at that. Thus, the phrase was translated
variously until, according to Carl Olson at www.Towson.edu, it was
picked up by Andrew Lang, a writer and translator of fairy tales. The
idea of a "Wine Dark Sea" seemed rather fantastic to later authors who
thought it perhaps a touch romantic. However, it was later recognized
that at times, when there is considerable debris and dust in the air,
the sea will seem to turn a deep red
Elsewhere we find
The Wine-Dark Sea is just the right description of the
waters which the Greeks ruled and on which they died. It is just a
short step from "wine-dark" to "blood-stained," an adjective used by
Aeschylus in his description of the sea at Salamis. The wine-dark sea
is a place of many undiscovered secrets, and one of them is Salamis:
the world’s first great multicultural battle, in which the men of three
continents met – and one woman, the first female admiral in history.
Whether ‘blue’ somehow dominates the literary scene is not really
decidable (or interesting). Our planet’s surface IS mainly water, and
many skies ARE blue. To vary the cliches, I sing “Woke up this morning,
Greens all round my bed.”
Stan Kelly-Bootle (Got the Greens real bad)