Historical evidence reveals that humans possess the remarkable ability to render certain physical appearances invisible if they do not focus on them, including something as fundamental as a color. Specifically, the color blue. While our eyes can perceive among approximately one million colors, it remains unclear how differently each person experiences them.
There’s been research that language shapes how we perceive the world around us. Because there was no word for “blue” there was no concept of blue, the color still existed but their brains just lumped it into “green”. Sight works by the visual centers brain taking data from the eyes, throwing most of it out, then building a model which is what the rest of the brain gets to actually “see”. That’s why optical illusions work.
A commonly cited source for language shaping our perception of color is Jules Davidoff’s studies on the Himba tribe. The Himba have no word for blue, and they struggled to pick out the blue square from this color wheel. However, they do have many distinctions for shades of green so when given this color wheel they could easily pick out the square that’s a different shade of green (and yes I opened it in MSpaint to check and one of the green squares is a different shade.)
There’s been research that language shapes how we perceive the world around us. Because there was no word for “blue” there was no concept of blue, the color still existed but their brains just lumped it into “green”. Sight works by the visual centers brain taking data from the eyes, throwing most of it out, then building a model which is what the rest of the brain gets to actually “see”. That’s why optical illusions work.
A commonly cited source for language shaping our perception of color is Jules Davidoff’s studies on the Himba tribe. The Himba have no word for blue, and they struggled to pick out the blue square from this color wheel. However, they do have many distinctions for shades of green so when given this color wheel they could easily pick out the square that’s a different shade of green (and yes I opened it in MSpaint to check and one of the green squares is a different shade.)