How can we observe if an object is a color we can’t see?

967 views

From what I understand, humans can see red green and blue and everything in the middle. Some animals I’ve heard see more colors than us, so what’s to say that some things in nature are colors that we don’t see? Who’s to say that some apples are red? And instead a different color that we don’t have a name for because we can’t process it?

How can we tell if this “apple” is as a matter of fact “red”.

In: 75

28 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Colours are arbitrary labels put on light waves of different size.

That’s why we talk about the spectrum of light.

The biggest waves that we can see are red; the bigger waves that aren’t visible immediately after that are what we colloquially call infrared.

On the other end the “smallest colour” we see is blue, with the light waves smaller than that disappearing off the visible spectrum into ultraviolet.

It’s not like there’s a secret colour like “blurple” at the end. It’s just certain animals have eyes with cones than can process a shifted or wider spectrum of light.

A red apple is red to everyone because we can observe the light being reflected from it and provide a non subjective measurement of it.

You are viewing 1 out of 28 answers, click here to view all answers.