• Question: is colour an illusion of the brain

    Asked by eimear to George on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: George Dowson

      George Dowson answered on 13 Nov 2014:


      Well, not to be too philosophical but technically everything we experience is an illusion of the brain! That said, colour can be said to exist independent of us seeing it. Colours are a very narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum of light. Anything heated to the right temperature or absorbing/emitting the right frequencies of photons will be coloured so colour is not just an illusion of the brain although what red looks like to me could be very different to what looks like red to you!

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