I always learned “ROYGBIV” as the colors of the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, violet.

What’s up with the last two? Isn’t indigo basically just dark blue? Why is it violet and not purple? Can’t it just be “ROYGBP”?

  • TootSweet@latte.isnot.coffee
    0·
    1 year ago

    Actually, the answer turns out to be pretty interesting.

    The short version is that what colors are considered “distinct” are heavily influenced by culture and Newton, from whom we get ROYGBIV, came from a culture which valued the dye called “indego.”

    Edit: It also seems Newton thought the number 7 had cosmic significance and thought there ought to be 7 colors.

    More info in this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf7WT6TLy8s

      • Nelots@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        Huh, I had always assumed oranges got their name from the color, not the other way around…

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        There’s a similar lack of distinction between Green/Blue in the ancient world.

        How would that arise? There’s blues in the sky that are very distinct from the greens of plants. Or are the blue detecting rods (or is it the cones that detect colour?) that new that we can perceive blue more than they could in early recorded history?

        • Fisk400@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 year ago

          You know how some people can tell you the exact shade of two colors that you consider identical? Turns out that giving colors distinct names in our mind makes us way better at seeing the difference and that is how we chop up the color spectrum from an infinite number of colors to seven. You think blue is completely different because you went to school and being able to tell the difference between blue and green was a requirement for you. If the school told you that the sky is a light shade of green and the forest is a dark shade of green you would adjust your brain accordingly.

          I guess my point is that all colors are made up by the state and we indoctrinate our children into the government sanctioned system at an early age.

    • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      1 year ago

      Well it was the 1600s and he was a natural philosopher. Back in those days, all sorts of weird stuff ended up in the books because it fit a certain philosophy. Our modern understanding of empirical science is a relatively new idea.