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    Boundary Conditions

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    Ninggen Hooman
    1. Goethe observed that the colors seen at a light-dark boundary depend on the orientation of the boundary, with a blue-violet edge extending into dark from light and a red-yellow edge extending into light from dark. 2. He found that varying the contrast between light and dark increases the intensity of the colored edges. 3. Goethe recorded the color sequences produced by light and dark beams passing through a prism. For both cases, yellow and blue remained closest to the light side and red and violet closest to the dark side. Where the edges overlapped, green was produced for light and magenta for dark.

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    Boundary Conditions

    Uploaded by

    Ninggen Hooman
    9 views4 pages
    1. Goethe observed that the colors seen at a light-dark boundary depend on the orientation of the boundary, with a blue-violet edge extending into dark from light and a red-yellow edge extending into light from dark. 2. He found that varying the contrast between light and dark increases the intensity of the colored edges. 3. Goethe recorded the color sequences produced by light and dark beams passing through a prism. For both cases, yellow and blue remained closest to the light side and red and violet closest to the dark side. Where the edges overlapped, green was produced for light and magenta for dark.

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    Boundary conditions

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    1. Goethe observed that the colors seen at a light-dark boundary depend on the orientation of the boundary, with a blue-violet edge extending into dark from light and a red-yellow edge extending into light from dark. 2. He found that varying the contrast between light and dark increases the intensity of the colored edges. 3. Goethe recorded the color sequences produced by light and dark beams passing through a prism. For both cases, yellow and blue remained closest to the light side and red and violet closest to the dark side. Where the edges overlapped, green was produced for light and magenta for dark.

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    9 views4 pages

    Boundary Conditions

    Uploaded by

    Ninggen Hooman
    1. Goethe observed that the colors seen at a light-dark boundary depend on the orientation of the boundary, with a blue-violet edge extending into dark from light and a red-yellow edge extending into light from dark. 2. He found that varying the contrast between light and dark increases the intensity of the colored edges. 3. Goethe recorded the color sequences produced by light and dark beams passing through a prism. For both cases, yellow and blue remained closest to the light side and red and violet closest to the dark side. Where the edges overlapped, green was produced for light and magenta for dark.

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    Boundary conditions[edit]

    When looked at through a prism, the colours seen at a light–dark


    boundary depend upon the orientation of this light–dark boundary.
    When viewed through a prism, the orientation of a light–dark boundary with respect to the prism's
    axis is significant. With white above a dark boundary, we observe the light extending a blue-violet
    edge into the dark area; whereas dark above a light boundary results in a red-yellow edge extending
    into the light area.
    Goethe was intrigued by this difference. He felt that this arising of colour at light–dark boundaries
    was fundamental to the creation of the spectrum (which he considered to be a compound
    phenomenon).
    Varying the experimental conditions by using different shades of grey shows that the intensity of
    coloured edges increases with boundary contrast.

    Light and dark spectra[edit]

    Light and dark spectra—when coloured edges overlap in a light


    spectrum, green results; when they overlap in a dark spectrum, magenta results. (Click for animation)
    Since the colour phenomenon relies on the adjacency of light and dark, there are two ways to
    produce a spectrum: with a light beam in a dark room, and with a dark beam (i.e., a shadow) in a
    light room.
    Goethe recorded the sequence of colours projected at various distances from a prism for both cases
    (see Plate IV, Theory of Colours). In both cases, he found that the yellow and blue edges remain
    closest to the side which is light, and red and violet edges remain closest to the side which is dark.
    At a certain distance, these edges overlap—and we obtain Newton's spectrum. When these edges
    overlap in a light spectrum, green results; when they overlap in a dark spectrum, magenta results.
    With a light spectrum (i.e. a shaft of light in a surrounding darkness), we find yellow-red colours
    along the top edge, and blue-violet colours along the bottom edge. The spectrum with green in the
    middle arises only where the blue-violet edges overlap the yellow-red edges. Unfortunately an
    optical mixture of blue and yellow gives white, not green, and so Goethe's explanation of Newton's
    spectrum fails.[23]
    With a dark spectrum (i.e., a shadow surrounded by light), we find violet-blue along the top edge,
    and red-yellow along the bottom edge—and where these edges overlap, we find (extraspectral)
    magenta.
    Olaf Müller presented the matter in the following way, "According to Newton, all spectral colors are
    contained in white sunlight, according to Goethe, the opposite can be said — that all colors of the
    complementary spectrum are contained in the dark." [1]
    Goethe's colour wheel[edit]
    Further information: Colour wheel

    Goethe's symmetric colour wheel with associated symbolic


    qualities (1809)
    When the eye sees a colour it is immediately excited and it is its nature, spontaneously and of
    necessity, at once to produce another, which with the original colour, comprehends the whole
    chromatic scale.

    — Goethe, Theory of Colours


    Goethe anticipated Ewald Hering's Opponent process theory[24] by proposing a symmetric colour
    wheel. He writes, "The chromatic circle... [is] arranged in a general way according to the natural
    order... for the colours diametrically opposed to each other in this diagram are those which
    reciprocally evoke each other in the eye. Thus, yellow demands violet; orange [demands] blue;
    purple [demands] green; and vice versa: thus... all intermediate gradations reciprocally evoke each
    other; the simpler colour demanding the compound, and vice versa ([25] paragraph #50).
    In the same way that light and dark spectra yielded green from the mixture of blue and yellow—
    Goethe completed his colour wheel by recognising the importance of magenta—"For Newton, only
    spectral colors could count as fundamental. By contrast, Goethe's more empirical approach led him
    to recognize the essential role of magenta in a complete color circle, a role that it still has in all
    modern color systems."[2]

    Complementary colours and colours psychology[edit]


    The "rose of temperaments" (Temperamentenrose), an earlier
    study (1798/9) by Goethe and Schiller, matching twelve colours to human occupations or their character
    traits (tyrants, heroes, adventurers, hedonists, lovers, poets, public speakers, historians, teachers,
    philosophers, pedants, rulers), grouped in the four temperaments.
    Goethe also included aesthetic qualities in his colour wheel, under the title of "allegorical, symbolic,
    mystic use of colour" (Allegorischer, symbolischer, mystischer Gebrauch der Farbe), establishing a
    kind of color psychology. He associated red with the "beautiful", orange with the "noble", yellow to
    the "good", green to the "useful", blue to the "common", and violet to the "unnecessary". These six
    qualities were assigned to four categories of human cognition, the rational (Vernunft) to the beautiful
    and the noble (red and orange), the intellectual (Verstand) to the good and the useful (yellow and
    green), the sensual (Sinnlichkeit) to the useful and the common (green and blue) and, closing the
    circle, imagination (Phantasie) to both the unnecessary and the beautiful (purple and red). [26]
    Notes on translation[edit]
    Magenta appeared as a colour term only in the mid-nineteenth century, after Goethe. Hence,
    references to Goethe's recognition of magenta are fraught with interpretation. If one observes the
    colours coming out of a prism—an English person may be more inclined to describe as magenta
    what in German is called Purpur—so one may not lose the intention of the author.
    However, literal translation is more difficult. Goethe's work uses two composite words
    for mixed (intermediate) hues along with corresponding usual colour terms such as "orange" and
    "violet".

    German English Symbolism

    Magenta (or purple


    Purpur )
    see below
    Schön (beautiful)

    Rot Red
    Gelbrot

    Orange Edel (noble)

    Orange

    Gelb Yellow Gut (good)

    Grün Green Nützlich (useful)

    Blau Blue Gemein (mean, common)

    Violett

    Violet Unnötig (unnecessary)

    Blaurot

    It is not clear how Goethe's Rot, Purpur (explicitly named as the complementary to green),
    [25]
    and Schön (one of the six colour sectors) are related between themselves and to the red tip of
    the visible spectrum. The text about interference from the "physical" chapter [27] does not
    consider Rot and Purpur synonymous. Also, Purpur is certainly distinct from Blaurot,
    because Purpur is named as a colour which lies somewhere between Blaurot and Gelbrot (,
    [27]
    paragraph 476), although possibly not adjacent to the latter. This article uses the English
    translations from the above table.

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