Reddit reviews Color Science and the Visual Arts: A Guide for Conservators, Curators, and the Curious

I understand you’re trying to step back and generalize about color perception, but as someone who works in this field, I find the foundational theories problematic. There are a significant number of “beliefs” and “assumptions” in the writing that overlook the biological realities affecting our optical and neurological systems.

For example, you assume that “color itself is the consequence of the brain's distinctions between the possible distributions of luminosity across different wavelengths of light”, which it isn’t as our visual systems are significantly more complex than this reduction.

A few things off the top of my head consider:

1. differences across the visual field of 1 eye
   
2. structural differences between the left and right eyes
   
3. color blindness
   
4. the ability to learn color sense (much like “getting an ear” in music, with serious practice in the visual arts you will see more and more richly)
   
5. changes in the organic visual system over time (simple baby to geriatric, but other things like cataracts, lens elasticity, and optical tumors)
   
6. Human visual system evolved for attention to pattern & change in the environment
   
7. “Average” human system is tuned for highest sensitivity in Green so colors have different sensitivities as do luminance ranges
   
8. Optical illusions!
   
   Here’s a quick overview: https://www.pantone.com/color-intelligence/articles/technical/how-do-we-see-color
   
   A lot of what you’re investigating is related to the common observer tests, which you should be aware of if you’re not! It also makes many assumptions, generalizations, and simplifications from shared reality to individual perception: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space
   
   And this is a great introductory book on color science before you get into textbooks:
   https://www.amazon.com/Color-Science-Visual-Arts-Conservators/dp/1606064819