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According to the dominant view in cognitive science, in particular in its more popularised versions, colour sensings or perceptions are located in a 'quality space'. This space has three dimensions: hue (the chromatic aspect of colour), saturation (the 'intensity' of hue), and brightness. This space is structured further via a small number of primitive hues or landmark colours, usually four (red, yellow, green, blue) or six (if white and black are included). It has also been suggested that there are eleven semantic universals - the six colours previously mentioned plus orange, pink, brown, purple, and grey. Scientific evidence for these widely accepted theories is at best minimal, based on sloppy methodology and at worst non-existent. Against the standard view, it is argued that colour might better be regarded as the outcome of a social-historical developmental trajectory in which there is mutual shaping of philosophical presuppositions, scientific theories, experimental practices, technological tools, industrial products, rhetorical frameworks, and their intercalated and recursive interactions with the practices of daily life. That is: colour, the domain of colour, is the outcome of interactive processes of scientific, instrumental, industrial, and everyday lifeworlds. That is: colour might better be called an exosomatic organ, a second nature. ispartof: pages:162-176 ispartof: COLOR IMAGING: DEVICE-INDEPENDENT COLOR, COLOR HARDCOPY, AND APPLICATIONS VII vol:4663 pages:162-176 ispartof: Color Imaging: Device-Independent Color, Color Hard Copy, and Applications VII Conference location:CA, SAN JOSE date:22 Jan - 25 Jan 2002 status: published

In this target article the following hypotheses are discussed: (1) Colour is autonomous: a perceptuolinguistic and behavioural universal. (2) It is completely described by three independent attributes: hue, brightness, and saturation: (3) Phenomenologically and psychophysically there are four unique hues: red, green, blue, and yellow; (4) The unique hues are underpinned by two opponent psychophysical and/or neuronal channels: red/green, blue/yellow. The relevant literature is reviewed. We conclude: (i) Psychophysics and neurophysiology fail to set nontrivial constraints on colour categorization. (ii) Linguistic evidence provides no grounds for the universality of basic colour categories. (iii) Neither the opponent hues red/green, blue/yellow nor hue, brightness, and saturation are intrinsic to a universal concept of colour. (iv) Colour is not autonomous.

Reflectance and spectral power functions are poor predictors of color experiences. Only in completely relativized conditions (single observer, non-metameric set of stimuli, and single set of viewing conditions) is the relationship close. Variation in reflectance of Munsell chips experienced by color-normal observers as having a unique green hue encompasses approximately sixty percent of the complete range of hues falling under the category “green”; and in recent determinations of unique hues, ranges of yellow and green as well as green and blue unique hues overlap.

The logic of the basic taste concept is discussed in relation to the physiology and psychophysics of color vision. An alternative version of the basic taste model, analogous to opponent-process theory is introduced. The logic of quality naming experiments is clarified.

Contrary to argument that unique hues are undemonstrated, the World Color Survey shows that speakers of more than 100 minor and tribal languages focus color categories predominantly on 4 of the 40 hue columns of the ethnographic Munsell array. The pattern is not conditioned by saturation levels or other arbitrary structures among the color chips, nor is Western influence likely to be the cause. Moreover, all evidence suggests that color cognition is autonomous despite the connotations and polysemies of color terms.

Saunders and van Brakel question whether the special status of red, green, yellow, and blue in our perceptual organization is anything more than a shadow cast by the English language. I suggest that it is more than this. We can hardly imagine treating lime, purple, orange, and teal as unique hues, and the reason does not lie in special training. To settle the issue, I suggest some lines for psychological experiment and anthropological investigation.