A Natural History of Color: The Science Behind What We See and How We See it

by Rob DeSalle, Hans Bachor Narrated by George Newbern

Overview

Over the years, color has dazzled, enhanced, and clarified the world we see. The experimental palettes of painting, the advent of the color photograph, Technicolor pictures, color printing, and so on have created a vivid and vibrant continuum. These ways of representing reality in “living color” echo our evolutionary reliance on and indeed privileging of color as a complex and vital form of consumption, classification, and creation. It's everywhere we look, yet do we really know much of anything about it? Finding color in stars and light, examining the system of classification that determines survival through natural selection, studying the arrival of color in our universe, and considering it as a fulcrum for philosophy, DeSalle's brilliant A Natural History of Color establishes that an understanding of color on many different levels is at the heart of learning about nature, neurobiology, individualism, and even a philosophy of existence. Color and a fine-tuned understanding of it are vital to understanding ourselves and our consciousness.

Editorial Reviews

Science Magazine - Michael Rossi

One comes away from this book with a sense that both the scientific description of color and the science that is used to arrive at that description are mutually reinforcing: a feedback loop wherein a par-ticular understanding of perception shapes a particular understanding of the world, which, in turn, shapes a particular understanding of perception, and so forth. In this way, the book is something of a meta-exercise in the history of perception—a way of viewing one’s own perceptions in a historical mirror. If one ap-proaches the book with this precept in mind, the experience will be rewarding.

Shelf Awareness

"Admirable and lucid. A necessary corrective to the notion that the human individual is fully subordinate to genes and evolution."

The New York Times Book Review (Praise for THE ACCIDENTAL HOMO SAPIENS)

"Looking at the role of chance in human evolution, the authors argue that the species has tremendous potential to change its behavior."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177753324
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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