Yellowness

Any sight that could be described as yellowish or bluish is called an inorganic chromatic visual sensation. We use words like yellow, blue, gold, cyan, indigo, brown, orange, violet, turquoise, chartreuse, azure, ocher, cerulean, sepia and so on to identify particular visual sensations within the inorganic category. The national flag of Sweden is used as an icon for inorganic visual sensations. You can click on icons to come back to a page like this for easy reference.

 Bead Panel from a baby carrier, Bahau people. Borneo 20th century, 27 x 24 cm. From the Teo Family collection, Kuching. Photograph by D Dunlop.
reports that, "no color is both yellowish and bluish … yellowness and blueness are mutually exclusive."1 Therefore inorganic visual sensations are susceptible of binary description. By the third hypothesis, the reference experience for inorganic chromatic sensation is seeing gold. So to make a binary description of an inorganic chromatic sensation, compare it to seeing gold. Report the result using one of the following algebraic statements. If the two experiences are not comparable, then say that the sensation is not an inorganic chromatic sensation and express this as

$\delta_{e}=0$

If the sensation is like seeing gold, then say that it is yellow. Express this as

$\delta_{e}=+1$

If the sensation is not like seeing gold, then say that it is blue and that

$\delta_{e}=-1$

If it is both like and not-like seeing gold, then say that it is a composite sensation and that

$-1 \le \delta_{e} \le 1$

The number $\delta_{e}$ is called the yellowness.

 Summary
 Adjective Definition Yellowness $\delta_{e} \equiv \begin{cases} +1 &\sf{\text{if a sensation is yellow }} \\ -1 &\sf{\text{if a sensation is blue }} \end{cases}$ 2-4
page revision: 234, last edited: 29 Jan 2018 19:05