LITERATURE

History of Colour Theories

History of Colour Theories

Introduction

The colour has been studied, analysed and defined by scientists, physicists, philosophers and artists. Each in his field and in close contact with the phenomenon of colour came to different conclusions, in some respects coincident or that were enriching for further study.

Discussion

Historical Colour Theories

Aristotle, a Greek philosopher (384-322 BC), all colours conceptualized as the result of a mixture of four colours. He warned about the fundamental role of the incidence of light and shadow on the colours (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E). The colours are basic Aristotle defined as: earth, fire, water, and sky (Lindberg, 2008, pp. 234-235). A few centuries later, scientist Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), defined as the colour of the material itself. He also created a basic scale of putting the white colours as the main, then yellow for earth, green for water, blue for the sky, and red for the fire was considered the black darkness. While noting that the green is produced from a combination, said that all the colours came from these four basic colours. Finally, it was Isaac Newton who created colour definition we know and accept today as validity. Newton discovered that light is colour, as it managed to break the light into the colours of the spectrum using sunlight passing through a prism. Same concept of droplets of water and sunlight to decompose forming a rainbow light through water droplets. The results of this decomposition colours are blue-violet, blue, green, yellow, red, orange and purple red. From these observations established the fundamental principle: “all opaque when illuminated reflect all or part of the components of the light they receive”. Just as Newton owe to the physical definition of colour; also owe Johann Goethe (1749-1832) the study of physiological and psychological changes that humans suffer ...