Do you know Isaac Newton's Theory of Colour? Or maybe Goethe's? Check Colour System's easy-to-understand, richly illustrated colour theories from the Antiquity to modern times: in short, a complete cultural history of colour. From Pythagoras, DaVinci, Astrological connections, I Ching, The System of the Chakras to virtual colour space. Believe.
Colour Systems Introduction The physics of light and colour plays a crucial role in Mankind's search for knowledge. In the light that falls upon the earth, we can find answers to the most fundamental of all questions: namely, the nature and origins of the known universe. Equally, through our habitual imposition of order upon a world we would otherwise perceive as random, we run the risk of distorting our vision. What we perceive as chaos may be an illusion. Our desire for a supreme order may serve more to reassure us in our incomprehension than provide a firm and logical structure for our discoveries; ultimately, we may succeed only in bringing disruption to the unity and harmony that surrounds us. In our obsession with scientific analysis, these colour-systems become a symbol. In the same way as they seek justification and meaning through the creation and definition of an extraordinary diversity of barely discernible colour-hues, our analysis appears at times to cause confusion; we may find no real answers - only more questions. Our world and the distant, scattered beauty of the universe seem unwilling to yield their secrets to the onslaught of science. Nevertheless, science has assumed that it alone can nurture the human soul, and has declared itself independent. Modern society's belief in self-redemption as creative faith has been described as the real delusion of our secularised age, and at the same time the declaration of all its failures. Is it now science, as the spearhead of human endeavour, which represents that delusion? Just as the surrealists sought to cast new light on familiar objects (Man Ray's flatiron, Meret Openheim's fur-lined cup or Magritte's "Ce n'est pas une pipe"), we can regard this website not merely as a history of the science and philosophy of light or a series of attempts to create an order for colours, but as a reminder of the choices we have in understanding the world - either empirically or theoretically, symbolically or scientifically. Although the principles described are universal, a desire to fragment and inflict change is also evident: we can take the light of the sun, direct it through a prism and then, like Newton, bend the resultant spectrum into a circle; a distortion that conforms with our own physiology, and creates a closed environment to facilitate the imposition of our own meaning on the world. On the other hand, we can simply observe the straight line of the visible spectrum as it runs from heat and infrared, and continues onwards to ultraviolet and radio energy; in other words, we can try to accept the world as it really is, and the secrets it contains. We can also see these systems as a catalogue of failure, a chronicle of our culture's constant inability to emulate the perfection of the world around us - a world that seems to defy analysis. Although we will find much here about the fundamental scientific principles that help us appreciate its wonders, we should, perhaps, not search too diligently for information that could tempt us to impose our own personal order; it is not the individual colour-systems that are important, but the sum of those systems. Indeed, seen as a whole, and despite their individual shortcomings, these systems still contain truths and help us trace the changing views of civilisation and culture. Representing not only a desire for order, but also a genuine (athough sometimes misguided) search for wisdom and knowledge, they also show how we can lose ourselves in the closeness of inspection and analysis. Without physics, we can attain no insight into the nature of the universe; but do we at the same time lose sight of other truths? It may be wiser, in the end, to view these systems as a game - just so many pieces in a puzzle. Each can be confusing, decorative or whimsical; we should accept them as so, in the same way as we should, perhaps, accept our world as the most complete and perfect system of them all. More info at Colour Systems via muxway
