Empedocles on Colour and Colour Vision

Abstract

Abstract Empedocles is among the first ancient philosophers, if not the very first, not only to use colour terms as adjectives characterizing the way things present themselves to us, such as ‘white’ of white milk (31 B 33 DK: λáλá λευκóν),, but also to refer to colours as items whose explanation forms a crucial part of a proper explanation of the world of experience. One basic fact which one cannot overlook about the objects of experience is that they are coloured, and another crucial fact is that they conspicuously differ from each other in particular in the way they are coloured. The surviving textual evidence about earlier philosophers who seem to have concerned themselves with colours is unfortunately so meagre that it proves extremely difficult to get a clear sense of what they think about this topic. But since Empedocles in many instances already seems to have relied on earlier thought about the matter, we shall occasionally have the chance, while trying to reconstruct his colour theory, also to comment on the little information available about the first recorded views on colour.

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