
No one could see the colour blue until modern times - ZeljkoS
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2
======
woodandsteel
The idea that you can't perceive something unless you have a word for it is
ridiculous. Every face I see walking down the street looks different, even
though my vocabulary for describing faces is not remotely adequate for the
various unique shapes. Or how about when you smell something you can't
identify? In fact, the way words get invented, very often, is we perceive
something we don't have a word for, so we make up a new one. And as far as
blue goes, thanks to millions of years of primate evolution, our eyes have
perceptors for blue. Were they just useless until the last few hundred years?

The people who push these sorts of ideas are operating out of a theory known
as social constructivism, which holds there is nothing universal in human
cognition or motivation, is all taught by society. But lots of research, like
with infants, shows that is not true. Social constructivists ignore the
science because they are pushing a utopianist left-wing ideology that holds
that we can re-make human psychology and have a perfect society.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> The idea that you can't perceive something unless you have a word for it is
> ridiculous.

That's not the idea. The idea is that if you don't interact with something you
can't perceive it, and if you can't perceive it you won't have a word for it.

> our eyes have perceptors for blue. Were they just useless until the last few
> hundred years?

They can be used to used to disambiguate other categories besides blue. For
example, you would use your blue receptors to differentiate forest green and
aquamarine. But aquamarine and cobalt might look exactly the same to you.

Every individual will see a slightly different set of categories based on
their experiences. The world has infinite information, and categories don't
actually exist in the world. They are just something we form in our minds
through interaction with things that do exist. If a category doesn't signify
anything useful to a creature, that creature won't perceive the category at
all. It doesn't mean their receptors aren't picking up the information. It
just means the perceptual system is disregarding it as noise.

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bitwize
The Japanese word for blue (aoi) is very ancient indeed, as are literary
references to the blue sky (aozora). However, Japanese did not develop a
distinct word for _green_ (midori) until relatively recently (circa 1000 AD);
and for centuries green was considered a shade of blue. It might still be: to
this day, a green traffic light will be referred to as a "blue light" by
Japanese. "Aoi" is also used in Japanese in a similar manner to how we would
use "green" to describe youth or inexperience, as the origin of the metaphor
is the same: the color of fruit that has not yet ripened.

~~~
wdrw
I don't know anything about Japanese, but if "aoi" is used to describe both
the sky and unripe fruit, what makes linguists say that the correct
translation for "aoi" is blue? Wouldn't it make more sense to say that "aoi"
means "green/blue", i.e. a general term for both green and blue? Doesn't it
make the relationship between the words "aoi" and "midori" the same as the
relationship between the words "rectangle" and "square" \- one is a superset
of the other?

~~~
Grue3
"Aoi" is listed as blue/green in dictionaries. It can also mean "pale" in some
contexts. "Midori" is specifically green, there's also "mizuiro" (color of
water) which is specifically light blue. Basically there are broad shades,but
if you need to describe a specific color there is probably also a word for it.

------
justinclift
The article seems to get some of it's key foundation points a bit wrong. :(

eg:

> _If you think about it, blue doesn’t appear much in nature — there aren’t
> blue animals, ..._

Unless they're being very precise with their definition of "animals", which
the article doesn't sound like it is being, they're off base. Blue creatures
do exist:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebird)

* [http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/exhibits/always-on-display/butterfl...](http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/exhibits/always-on-display/butterfly-rainforest/id-guide/blue-butterflies/)

(etc)

~~~
jessriedel
Not to mention peacocks and some frogs, snakes, geckos, jellyfish, tropical
fish, parrots.

Also, eyes.

~~~
jack9
While he made mention of the relative rarity of blue eyes, in animals, blue
eyes are common.

------
awinter-py
I think the core example for sapir-whorf is an american language that had no
word for blue.

I love these linguistic studies beyond all reason but also take them with a
grain of salt; Julian Jaynes (origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the
bicameral mind) based his whole argument on homer's greek. So did the Singer
of Tales; neither of these are what you'd call prime scholarship.

~~~
woodandsteel
John McWhorter's book <i>The Language Hoax</i> explains the linguistic
researchers have found that the sapir-whorf hypothesis is just wrong.

~~~
dietrichepp
"Just wrong" is a bit harsh, the modern argument seems to fall along the lines
of "to what extent is the hypothesis true/false?"

------
WT_Dore
This "wine-dark sea" conclusion is bullshit. "Wine dark" is a translation of a
phrase( [http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/sea/winelike-
sea](http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/sea/winelike-sea)) , oínopa pónton, that
fits the meter used: [http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/20/science/homer-s-sea-
wine-d...](http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/20/science/homer-s-sea-wine-
dark.html) .

It's about more than color:
[http://www.jstor.org/stable/642564?seq=1#page_scan_tab_conte...](http://www.jstor.org/stable/642564?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

------
Gravityloss
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tutankhamun&t=ffab&iax=1&ia=images](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tutankhamun&t=ffab&iax=1&ia=images)

or how about Hathor

[http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53f353f4e4b0dbe1ff73ce...](http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53f353f4e4b0dbe1ff73ced2/54e2a5cbe4b014cdbc43b301/54e2a5cde4b0cc0f086bf0f5/1424139775141/Ultramarine+Lapis+Pendant+Egyptian+goddess+Hathor.jpg)

~~~
Gravityloss
There's so much more if you just use google.

How about south america:
[https://fr.pinterest.com/tanukus/yeibechai/](https://fr.pinterest.com/tanukus/yeibechai/)

Greece 200 BC: [http://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/illustration/vase-with-
plas...](http://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/illustration/vase-with-plastic-
relief-decorations-painted-ceramics-stock-graphic/148357906)

------
Nomentatus
It's more a matter of commerce.

Ultramarine, and cobalt blue came along later, in the middle ages; the ancient
Greeks and Romans had few and poor options to for creating blue dye, or tiles,
or paint. So it just wasn't seen much, and there's no need to invent a word to
say the sky is blue when you can say it's "a clear sky."

This probably did affect perceptive abilities to at least some degree - we do
lose the ability to hear and distinguish phonemes we don't hear when quite
young, but that's a much more extreme case.

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thyrsus
Wasn't Homer called "the blind poet"? Of course, that doesn't address the
other texts considered.

------
na85
Moronic. Language does not influence the wavelengths of light that our retinas
respond to.

Whether they called it Blue or not is irrespective of whether or not they
could see the colour.

~~~
twic
It's not. That's the point.

Yes, their eyes responded to blue light. But without having a separate concept
of blue, they probably couldn't distinguish blue from green, or at least could
do so less well. That's what the experiment with the Himba is about.

There's been tons of research on this:

[http://lclab.berkeley.edu/papers/tics2-published.pdf](http://lclab.berkeley.edu/papers/tics2-published.pdf)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate)

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ponderingHplus
Reminds me of one of the first articles I ever saved to Pocket (when it was
still called Read It Later) - The crayola-fication of the world

*[http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2012/06/05/the-crayola-fication...](http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2012/06/05/the-crayola-fication-of-the-world-how-we-gave-colors-names-and-it-messed-with-our-brains-part-i/)

