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Newton’s Eye and Homer’s Sky
Manage episode 480378230 series 3502293
In the 1660s, Isaac Newton sat alone in the dark… and slid a needle behind his eyeball — not out of madness, but to unlock the secrets of light.
Centuries earlier, Homer described the ocean not as blue, but “wine-dark.” In fact, in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the colour blue doesn’t exist. It’s never mentioned. Not once.
That strange absence haunted William Gladstone. As a scholar—and Prime Minister—he scoured the ancient world’s most sacred texts: the Bible, the Vedas, the Koran. Still no blue. Only the Egyptians, obsessed with the afterlife, spoke of it — as if they alone could see it. Why?
Because colour isn’t just in the world. It’s in the mind. Filtered through the fragile lenses of our eyes. Shaped by evolution. Warped by biology. You see three cones of colour. A dog sees two. A Mantis shrimp sees sixteen!
The truth is chilling: we don’t see the world as it is — only as we’re built to perceive it. This is the story of a colour that didn’t exist... until we learned to name it.
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