The Mystery of Color

Color is a very funny thing, it isn’t necessary for life, yet it adds an element to life that makes life enjoyable. What is it about a beautiful sunset that captures our attention, and what is it about a gorgeous painting that makes it worth millions of dollars? Two questions that I am going to ask you are these, how did color get here, and does it actually exist, or is it a figment of our imagination?

How did color get here?
An interesting thing about color is that it has three primary colors. Not just one. I know that you learned this in kindergarten, but I think that this is actually pretty cool. For color to not have one primary color, it means that it couldn’t have evolved. In evolution you have the molecule, and by natural selection and random mutation it branches out into other things. Think of it like an umbrella, the starting molecule is the handle, you pull the handle and the spokes spring out and form an umbrella. The handle is the starting molecule, and the spokes are the different forms that have evolved from the handle. The point that I’m trying to make here is that color cannot be evolved, because it has no starting point from which to evolve from. So we have one of two possibilities here, either some being created color, or color does not exist at all.

Does color exist?
I’m now going to use the above argument, and twist it slightly, to make a new argument; here it is; if color has no molecular basis, does it still exist? Some people argue that since it doesn’t, it cannot exist. If you think about it, this kind of makes sense, for example, can you see color in the dark? No you can’t, does that mean that light plays tricks on your mind and makes you imagine that color exists? I’m not inclined to think so.

First of all, as someone who holds to the intelligent design theory, I have no problem believing that color has no one great ultimate color basis. But the argument that color doesn’t exist is a bit trickier. It isn’t that I’ve given this a great deal of thought, but it just doesn’t make sense. I don’t know any tricky little philosophical arguments for color, so I’ll resort to common sense (horror of horrors). Just kidding.

If something has any ontological status it must conform to the laws of nature. I’m inclined to think that color does conform to the laws of nature. For example, the sun is always yellow; it does not change to blue because we imagine it does so. Every reasonable person since the beginning of the earth has not argued the fact that the sun is yellow. Insert about anything with color in for the sun and this proves my point. It’s not like the chair I’m sitting in currently changes colors at the bidding of my imagination. I can twist my perception of the chair by doing something like wearing sunglasses, but if we are being reasonable we will accept the fact that the chairs color did not change, only that our perception of the chair changed.