and

a blog with cultural bulimia.

Sunday, November 30, 2003

Do you see what i see?


"A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but one called by any other color might look a bit different."
squares
"Roses are red; violets are blue. But if we called a violet red, what color would it be? This is not a rhetorical question. How we label things can affect how we perceive them. Naming can impose meaning. And though science and anthropology have provided significant support for the proposition that color perception is basically identical across societies, recent studies have found evidence that we also see our rainbows through cultural lenses."
COLOR COGNITION
NYTimes Magazine

Digressions: This has been a favorite of mine -- I see blue and you see blue -- but who is to say we both perceive that color the same way? Or, for that matter, shapes? It's one of those ideas that actually frighten me (because I need to know the answers), like the size of the universe. How can something be infinite? I can't grasp the concept with my limited developed brain matter.

It is not enough just to know -- I have to understand.