In Defence of the Colour Blue

The internet is a sad, lonely world where people will grasp at any novelty to stir them from digital ennui. Recently – or actually it has been over the last several years – a story has kept resurfacing in various internet journals, blogs, social media outlets and “memes” (whatever a “meme” might be) that is supposed to tantalize readers and viewers with the improbable assertion that the colour blue is a modern invention. It is a novelty story in the “stranger-than-fiction” category designed to brighten the dull days of the world-weary. 

The story, which takes several forms, appeared yet again in a recent edition of ‘Business Insider’ – exactly the sort of content you would expect to find in ‘Business Insider’! - under the heading NO ONE COULD SEE THE COLOUR BLUE UNTIL MODERN TIMES. It was thereafter reposted by well-meaning but bored individuals who were taken in by the headline, and thus it began yet another round of self-perpetuating appearances on the world wide web as it slowly but surely insinuated itself into the daily conversation of the digital class and twitterati. It soon became an item of received wisdom. People who should know better started coming up to you saying “Did you know that no one could see the colour blue until modern times?” 

In the ‘Business Insider’ article we are told:

Ancient languages didn't have a word for blue - not Greek, not Chinese, not Japanese, not Hebrew. And without a word for the color, there's evidence that they may not have seen it at all.

This, really, is the crux of the whole matter. It is a linguistic argument. Someone has claimed that words for blue are missing in old languages and since there was no word for it then people in olden times must not have been able to see the colour at all – as unlikely as that might be. No other evidence for this proposal is on offer, except for some extremely dubious experiments with an obscure Namibian tribe who, apparently, have trouble distinguishing between blue and green. This leads to the logical leap that asserts that the colour blue is a modern invention, a recent social construction (you know, like gender.) As the ‘Business Insider’ puts it:

Before blue became a common concept, maybe humans saw it. But it seems they didn't know they were seeing it.

And they ask:

If you see something yet can't see it, does it exist?

We arrive at the real point of the story: the tiresome trope that knowledge is socially constructed. We have the physical receptors to see the colour blue, sure enough, and we can safely assume that ancient people did too, but if there is no corresponding construct of knowledge (which is purely subjective and has no necessary correlation to objective facts) then it may as well have not existed at all. We make reality. Reality is a social construct, a gentleman’s agreement, and nothing more.

A story as absurd as this should give us reason to pause. The moment one encounters a headline such as NO ONE COULD SEE THE COLOUR BLUE UNTIL MODERN TIMES one should immediately suspect that it is a piece of post-modern relativist twaddle, and, indeed, so it turns out to be. It is a good example of how post-modern intellectualism operates. Typically, you take some flimsy linguistic evidence and add to it some half-baked anthropological study of a colour-retarded tribe no one has ever heard of - the exception that disproves the rule - and use it to demolish one of the most obvious standards of common sense. It is disconcerting and it is intended to be. If even the colours we see are invented, if they are just social constructs, then every thing we ever held to be normal or true about ourselves and our world is open to question since it is probably equally false as well.

As it happens, though, this particular exercise in post-modern absurdity is easy to refute. It is extraordinary that we should hesitate to think otherwise. Is it true that ancient languages had no word for the colour blue? Of course not. It is demonstrable nonsense. Could pre-modern people see the colour blue. Of course they could. 

The roots of this nonsense lie in the late XIXth century. The entire idea is a ludicrous falsity first proposed by the British Prime Minister Gladstone. It has since been taken up, extended, amplified and digitalized into an internet phenomenon. 

Gladstone, readers should be aware, is the most odious Prime Minister in British history prior to Tony Blair. This is the man who turned British foreign policy against the Ottomans and embraced the family of Ibn Saud. This is the man who, as Prime Minister, would often take to the back streets of London and lecture prostitutes on Christian morality. In his student days, it seems, he once sat down and trawled through the epic poems of Homer noting references to various colours. An unimaginative simpleton, he was perturbed by the famous Homeric description of the “wine-dark sea”. Why “wine-dark”? Did Homer not know that the sea is blue? Never mind the tradition that Homer was, in fact, blind. It was Mr Gladstone – a counter of instances - who first determined that Homer lacked a word for blue. What about the Greek word “cyan” one wonders? Gladstone overlooked that. He hit upon the theory that the Greeks could not see the colour blue. (Apparently, by the same reasoning, they didn't defacte either, since Homer makes no mention of toilets. The old 'argument from silence' fallacy.) Gladstone was not only politically loathsome, he was dim as well. 

Getting more to the point, what, let us ask, about the very many instances of surviving works of Greek art - not to mention Minoan and Egyptian and others - that feature blue enamel or traces thereof? These alone demolish the entire case. Mr Gladstone - not an artistic sort of soul - overlooked that too. Is there no evidence of early people using the colour blue in art work? Of course there is! An abundance of it! 

It is true that the earliest cave art tends to lack the colour blue, but that is purely because permanent blue dyes are relatively rare in nature, difficult to procure, difficult to make and quick to fade. All the same, one can find plenty of blue in ancient art. Is it really necessary to show examples of it in order to expose Mr Gladstone’s theory as the nonsense it is? See the pictures on this page. Mr Gladstone was a vicious political revisionist, a toady, a self-righteous moral puritan and a literal-minded philistine who could see no better purpose for the texts of Homer than to count instances of adjectives – and that, badly. That is where this whole story comes from. The idea that the Greeks - and by extension other noble people of ancient times - could not see the colour blue should be known as Gladstone's folly. 

Regrettably, we still live with the disastrous realignments of British foreign policy first made by Mr Gladstone, and now it seems we must endure his ridiculous undergraduate theory about colours as well. After all, let us recall that, as well as knowledge, stupidity is also socially constructed. The story that no one could see the colour blue before the modern era is itself a social construction and reveals much about the forlorn age in which we live. That anyone – anyone! – could even countenance such a headline is testament to just how eager we are today for some new stimulation, some novelty to shake us from our jaded seen-it-all-already post-modern lethargy.  We are now so prepared to dismiss common sense, so prepared to throw away every eternal verity, so ready to believe that the entire testimony of the human race heretofore is bunk, that we will entertain even the most ridiculous of propositions. Is it true that ancient people could not see the colour blue? The correct answer to such a question is: Don't be stupid. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black