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Rody Oldenhuis
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As already indicated by Brandon, it depends on your point of view.

If by "color" you mean the definition you find on wikipedia, then "black" is definitely a color; "black" is just how humans perceive the absence of any significant peaks in the spectrum of reflected light, and a low overall intensity compared to surrounding reflectors (or even a complete absence of light, like the night sky).

If on the other hand, you define "color" to be a particular (single) wavelength in the visible part of the EM spectrum (so NOT including any human interpretation), then "black", "white", all shades of grey in between, and a whole bunch of other things, are not colors; those colors do not appear explicitly in the spectrum (unless you define the combination of "red", "green" and "blue" to be "white", but then there is already a certain level of human interpretation).

There really is not a clear, unique and unambiguous answer to this question; whether "black" is a color or not depends on the particular set of base axioms you are using.

As already indicated by Brandon, it depends on your point of view.

If by "color" you mean the definition you find on wikipedia, then "black" is definitely a color; "black" is just how humans perceive the absence of any significant peaks in the spectrum of reflected light, and a low overall intensity compared to surrounding reflectors.

If on the other hand, you define "color" to be a particular (single) wavelength in the visible part of the EM spectrum (so NOT including any human interpretation), then "black", "white", all shades of grey in between, and a whole bunch of other things, are not colors; those colors do not appear explicitly in the spectrum (unless you define the combination of "red", "green" and "blue" to be "white", but then there is already a certain level of human interpretation).

There really is not a clear, unique and unambiguous answer to this question; whether "black" is a color or not depends on the particular set of base axioms you are using.

As already indicated by Brandon, it depends on your point of view.

If by "color" you mean the definition you find on wikipedia, then "black" is definitely a color; "black" is just how humans perceive the absence of any significant peaks in the spectrum of reflected light, and a low overall intensity compared to surrounding reflectors (or even a complete absence of light, like the night sky).

If on the other hand, you define "color" to be a particular (single) wavelength in the visible part of the EM spectrum (so NOT including any human interpretation), then "black", "white", all shades of grey in between, and a whole bunch of other things, are not colors; those colors do not appear explicitly in the spectrum (unless you define the combination of "red", "green" and "blue" to be "white", but then there is already a certain level of human interpretation).

There really is not a clear, unique and unambiguous answer to this question; whether "black" is a color or not depends on the particular set of base axioms you are using.

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Rody Oldenhuis
  • 4.3k
  • 22
  • 37

As already indicated by Brandon, it depends on your point of view.

If by "color" you mean the definition you find on wikipedia, then "black" is definitely a color; "black" is just how humans perceive the absence of any significant peaks in the spectrum of reflected light, and a low overall intensity compared to surrounding reflectors.

If on the other hand, you define "color" to be a particular (single) wavelength in the visible part of the EM spectrum (so NOT including any human interpretation), then "black", "white", all shades of grey in between, and a whole bunch of other things, are not colors; those colors do not appear explicitly in the spectrum (unless you define the combination of "red", "green" and "blue" to be "white", but then there is already a certain level of human interpretation).

There really is not a clear, unique and unambiguous answer to this question; whether "black" is a color or not depends on the particular set of base axioms you are using.