The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Number, O
The Creation of Color in 18th-Century Europe Number, Order, Form Sarah Lowengard Number, Order, Form Color Systems and Systematization Assume that it is possible to determine the number of colors in the world. Ignore, for the moment, certain philosophical and physiological questions—for example, whether a color exists if it cannot be seen and if the number of colors must be different for each person because it is a unique product of the physics and biology of the eye. While these considerations are important in themselves, they are, for our purposes, tangential. If we can agree that the number of colors is finite and determinable, then what is that number, and how is it calculated? How do the answers to these questions aid the work of colorists, whether scientists, manufacturers, experimenters, or the unaffiliated curious? Assume also that there is some primordial physical form for colors, one that conveys critical information to the viewer at a glance. What should this be? What should it tell? How should it be created? How, exactly, will this critical information aid and reflect the development of the practices and theories of color? Finally, accept that the relationship among coloring materials is such that specific mixtures of certain colors yield specific other colors. There must be, then, some small number of colors from which all others are made. What is that number, and what are those colors? I have begun upon a great undertaking. The arrangement of my fossils and making a catalogue for them. As a Potter I make clays my first article, after which stones vitrifiable will follow, but I cannot draw the line betwixt clays and some of the stones.
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