Comment on Blue could have been a warmest color
remon@ani.social 5 days ago
I don’t think so.
Just look up at a clear sky. It’s blue with a orange circle and it’s very obvious that the orange circle is the warm bit, even before the invention of fire.
So it never stood a chance.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
Oh that is a good point. The sun really is pretty orange. Long before the first fire, people probably associated orange and yellow with warmth.
However, cultural associations can change over time. What we consider warm is largely sustained by old paintings and pictures. Modern day artists use orange to convey a warm atmosphere, and that’s why the idea of orange as a warm color persists.
People don’t really use fire that much any more, so realistically speaking, warmth doesn’t even have a color today.
Mothra@mander.xyz 5 days ago
I’m going to add to the sun point, and remark that the cool range of tones is associated with snow and ice, since these reflect the blue of the sky. So even if people didn’t need fire to cook or live their lives at all, they would associate the blue ranges with winter.
Water in its liquid state also looks blue, and is usually associated with something refreshing in warm areas. So even in the tropics you would have a reason for associating blues with cools.
In contrast, most desert areas are naturally in orange ranges. You can also argue autumn forests would look orange and they’re not exactly warm, but the light in an autumn forest doesn’t bounce as much or as tinged compared to light conditions in desert areas, where the soil or sand is yellow or orange -red, and where whatever casting a shadow is probably the ground itself.
Finally, human bodies are more in a warm range tone (no matter the skin color) when compared to the same body suffering cold. Nails and lips take on a bluish hue, so do fingertips.
I think you would need to tweak your universe a little bit more to achieve a reversal in color association.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
Those are some pretty solid points! Especially the one about healthy vs. freezing skin tone.
blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
People use fire to cook with all around the world several times a day.
What are you on about?
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
Developed countries with electricity and district heating. What you’re saying still applies to the rest of the world though.
wewbull@feddit.uk 5 days ago
The sun is, by definition, white. White is what we call it when an object reflects all spectra of sunlight.
It’s only at sunrise / sunset when the atmosphere filters out more of the blue spectrum that it apparently turns more orange/red.
remon@ani.social 5 days ago
White light is light that contains all visible wavelengths at the roughly the same proportions. The sun has nothing to do with this definition.
Our sun is actually slightly greenish-blue as that is where it’s peak output is.
wewbull@feddit.uk 5 days ago
The key word there is “visible”. Our eyes adapted to the spectra of our star when filtered by our atmosphere. We perceive that spectra as white.