aUniversity of Munich, Germany
bUniversity of Heidelberg, Germany
In the second part of the 19th century, there was an international scientific controversy on the development, recognition and denomination of color terms, in which participated famous scholars like William E. Gladstone, Lazarus Geiger, Grant Allen, Ernst Krause or Charles Darwin. Among the proponents of the theory that human color perception had developed gradually during the evolution of the human species was the German ophthalmologist Hugo Magnus, who formulated crucial suggestions concerning the relationship between the human capacity of perceiving different colors and the existing color terms in the languages of the world.
Revising his original point of view in further publications in consequence of the results of his ethnological inquiry, Magnus brought to light much information still relevant for current debates. Comparing some of his results like e.g. the evolutionary color term sequence to a modern scientific concept such as Berlin and Kay’s, there appear to be astonishing similarities, suggesting that the contributions of Hugo Magnus to the color-term discussion have unjustly fallen into oblivion.
Introduction
In the late 18th century arose a cross-scientific controversy, which reached its peak around 1880 and generated results that can still be seen to be valid today. An interest in human perception of color and its possible reflection in different color terminologies began with philological analyses by William Ewart Gladstone (1858), when he noticed the lack of cer-tain major color terms in ancient Greek literature, the sort later to be calledbasic. Starting from a detailed report on Homeric epics,1the controversy grew with appearance of works by Lazarus Geiger (1871) and Hugo Magnus (1877a, 1877b), especially their observations
. In Section IV (Homer’s Perception and Use of Colour) of Gladstone’s third volume, he lists “the signs of the immaturity” he found in the Homeric poems: “I. The paucity of colours. II. The use of the same word to denote not only different hues or tints of the same colour, but colours which according to us, are essentially different. III.
The description of the same object under epithets of colour fundamentally disagreeing one from the other. IV. The vast predominance of the most crude and elemental forms of colour, black and white, over every other, and the decided tendency to treat other colours as simply intermediate modes between these extremes. V. The slight use of
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on the designations of colors in theRigveda, the Bible, and Greek and Latin authors, such as Aristotle, Juvenal, Statius and Valerius Flacchus.
Philological Research
Gladstone (1877: 366) postulated that in the time of Homer the human eye was incapable of discerning and distinguishing all colors. He based his hypothesis on the evolution-ary perspectives in the tradition of Charles Darwin and Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine Lamarck.2 Consequently, Gladstone (1877: 367) imagined an “education” over time to higher color sensibility for humanity as a whole.3He concludes his argument with the un-informed observation that the primitive human being was only equipped with the faculty to distinguish between bright and dark hues, and that the development of the visual organ was accompanied by the recognition of more colors; for example, Homer already named the colors red and orange [erythros, xanthos] (see translation in Gladstone 1878: 388).
Lazarus Geiger (1871: 57) was also convinced that color perception was an acquired faculty, which could be retraced through the study of ancient literature. He proposed a
‘black-red-gold’ age followed by a ‘white-yellow-red-black’ age. The more primitive stage would correspond to the color terms in theRigvedaand the latter to the stage of color perception in the time of Ionian natural philosophy. Neither Gladstone nor Geiger dis-tinguished between the color terms they found in the ancient texts and the capacity to perceive colors.
By 1877, Hugo Friedrich Magnus, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Breslau, became aware of Geiger’s work. The historical evolution of the function and capacity of different human senses had rarely been treated in medical literature,4 and Geiger’s work suggested to him a way to link philological analysis and evolutionary theory with medical and physiological research. Magnus also recognized a significant and prob-lematic contradiction in comparing the sensory faculties of ‘uncivilized peoples’ (Wilde) of his time with the ancients. At first thought one is inclined to believe in the famous
colour in Homer, as compared with other elements of beauty, for the purpose of poetic effect, and its absence in certain cases where we might confidently expect to find it” (Gladstone 1858: 458).
. Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine De Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck.
. “Painters know that there is an education of the eye for colour in the individual. The proposition, which I desire to suggest, is that this education subsists also for the race” (Gladstone 1877: 367). Magnus followed him in this position (cf. 1878b, f).
. Magnus had also shown his interest and passion for the history of ophthalmology and connected subjects in many other publications such asGeschichte des Grauen Stares[History of cataract], 1876a;Das Auge in seinen ästhetischen und cultur-geschichtlichen Beziehungen[The eye in its aesthetic and historic-cultural relationship], 1876b;Die Anatomie des Auges bei den Griechen und Römern[The anatomy of the eye at the time of the Greek and the Romans], 1878a;Culturgeschichtliche Bilder aus der Entwickelung des ärztlichen Standes[Historic-cultural images of the development of the medical profession], 1890;Die antiken Büsten des Homer: eine augenärztliche-ästhetische Studie[The Ancient busts of Homer: An ophthalmologic-aesthetic study], 1896;Die Augenheilkunde der Alten[The Ophthalmology of the Ancients], 1901.
Color term research of Hugo Magnus
acuteness of hearing, the sense of smell and eyesight of the hunting and gathering people who live in accord with nature (Naturleben). He asked “Why should they not be able to distinguish colors?”
Magnus tried to solve this contradiction, as he saw it, by postulating a difference be-tween the elementary capacity of a sense organ, for example, the perception of light (eye) or sound waves (ear), and other possible functions (Functionsäusserungen), such as be-ing able to discern different colors or melodies. The latter faculties are for Magnus higher functions, which were formed in the course of evolution and, therefore, should be seen as modern acquisitions of mankind (1877a: 1–6).
For an investigation of color terms Magnus had to rely, as did his predecessors, on philological analyses, even though he was a doctor of medicine and a scientist particularly interested in the anthropological and physiological aspects of the subject. But in accor-dance with his theory of the evolutionary acquisition of higher functions of the sense organs, he rejected the method of analysis practiced up to then, which had used as a point of reference the color scale of the spectrum established by Isaac Newton. Magnus instead chose a subdivision, which, in his view, was closer to the ancient capacity of color percep-tion, because the Newton scale reflected the modern faculty to perceive and discern the color spectrum; hence he drew up light ‘richness’ (Lichtreichthum) as a criterion for his analyses of the ancient texts.5Thus, unlike his scientific predecessors, he avoided a direct identification of the color terms found in ancient literature with the color nomenclature of modern European languages (Magnus 1877a: 6–9). According to this concept, he struc-tured his first inquiry: “Colors of luminous intensity” (lichtstarke Farben) like red, orange, yellow; “colors of medium luminous intensity” (Farben mittlerer Lichtstärke) like green;
and “colors of little luminous intensity” (Farben geringer Lichstärke) like blue and violet (Magnus 1877a: 9–41).
Finally Magnus (1877a: 41–42) postulated four stages of evolution concerning the per-ception of color in the history of mankind. At a first primitive stage people had only a sensibility for red, which coincided with the sensibility for bright and luminous colors.
For that Magnus found it more useful to speak of the capacity to discern quantities of light and not color hues in a stricter sense.6A second stage was reached when the human retina was sufficiently developed to distinguish red from yellow, as these colors were no longer merged in perception of simple brightness. By the third stage mankind had developed the sensibility for green hues, colors of a medium luminous intensity, which were detached from, on one hand, perception of darkness (dark green) and, on the other, perception of
. Magnus (1877: 45–46) followed Aristotle and Helmholtz, who both try to explain color sensibility by focusing on color lightness. Magnus, who was fully aware of physical and physiological theories of his time – see Magnus 1881: 27–50, where he discusses the theories of Young, Helmholtz, Hering and others – explicitly quotes Helmholtz (1867: 267).
. Magnus (1877b: 19) deduced this first stage from the diminishing faculty of the eye to discern colors when the light is insufficient, referring to observations of Chodin (1877).
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darker yellow (light green).7The last stage was reached with the faculty to perceive colors of weak luminous intensity like blue and violet, which were until then perceptually merged in an idea of general darkness. In sum, Magnus inferred an evolution, which followed the spectrum of color, starting at the luminous, intense colors and finding its end in the dark part of the spectrum.
For Magnus, as an ophthalmologist, the most intriguing part of the investigation might have been the possibility of a physiological explanation, which could illuminate this postulated evolution. To substantiate his assertion that at the earliest stage people could only perceive the quantity of light hitting the retina and not its quality,8he quotes Greek testimonies like Empedocles, Aristotle and Plato, who emphasized the basic opposition of dark versus light whence all other colors emanate.
Magnus believed that over the centuries of human evolution the retina had been more and more exposed to light and the continuous stimulation by light rays had caused a gradual change in perception of lightness with respect to darkness. This path of evolution seemed to him quite logical, because his queries about the color perception of children suggested certain parallels, such as the preference for red stimuli in the young children (Magnus 1877a: 43–56).
In this earliest study by Hugo Magnus, the striking element is the importance he at-tributes to brightness in color perception. This reminds us very much of the findings a cen-tury later of Kay and McDaniel (1978: 616–617) and Kay (1975: 258–260). At Stage I of the Berlin and Kay (1969) theory of color-term evolution, there is only a distinction between black and white. But with Rosch’s (1972) Dugum Dani studies, we received a different pic-ture of this first stage. People of this ethnic group seem to distinguish between light-warm colors (mola: white, red, orange, yellow, pink, red-purple) and dark-cool colors (mili:
black, blue, green). Foci ofmolaandmiliwere found to be situated, respectively, in light and warm versus dark and cool hues. Especially remarkable was the focus ofmola, which in 67% cases was identified with English focal ‘red’.9Magnus had not, though, introduced the opposition of light-warm hues versus dark-cool hues. His decisive criterion is the degree of brightness related to the light richness, strength (Lichtreichthum, Lichtstärke).
When Magnus brought up the argument of color brightness in order to support the evolutionary theory of Geiger, it might be considered as the right step with the wrong objective. For the remotest ages Magnus (1877a: 10–11) favored red and not white as the focus of bright hues, because of the luminous intensity of the former. Thus he postulated that those people could not really perceive red hues, but just the intensity, which caused a particular sensibility to these rays of the spectrum. For him, it was the most reasonable
. This development also implied a clearer distinction between the luminous, intense colors red and yellow. In this respect, dark green is the dark part of the luminous, intense color spectrum.
. “This even lower stage . . . in the development of the color sense could fairly be characterized as follows: at that time the human retina, when struck and excited by light of any composition, sensed only its quantity and not its quality, i.e. color” (Magnus 1877a: 44, our translation).
. Hardin (1998: 211–216) offers an interpretation of these findings integrated in the Berlin & Kay scheme and his critical observations.
Color term research of Hugo Magnus
means to explain why theRigvedamakes no clear distinction between white and red. In Magnus’s second publication on color terms (1877b) he mainly presents more concisely the theory of his first publication (1877a).10As before, Magnus (1877b: 19) situates the first stage in the age of theRigveda, characterized by a bright (red/white)–dark opposi-tion, and the second stage, with emerging sensitivity to yellow, in the age of Homer. He adds considerations about the distinction between green and blue. At this third stage of evolution, the sensitivity is so far developed that man could finally perceive and distin-guish the color green, but not yet blue. This could explain the frequent confusion of blue and green in ancient Greek texts. The following stage is characterized by the sensitivity to blue and violet. Bright blue is resolved from the formerly grey part of spectrum, dark blue from the dark/black spectrum (1877b: 10–12).
As an interesting supplement, Magnus (1877b: 12) reports on Bastian’s (1869: 89) investigation, which described the confusion of blue and green in Burma at that time as be-ing totally normal.11Magnus drew what was for him the logical conclusion that these peo-ple were still on a lower level of evolution and had not reached the sensibility for blue hues.
At the end of this publication, Magnus’s considerations about the consequences of his thesis on color evolution lead him to speculate that the development of our physiological faculties has not come to an end, but is still in alteration. In other words, future humans will be able to perceive more in the color spectrum than current humans do, being able to see beyond the present limit at wavelengths shorter than ultraviolet.
Polemics on the Gladstone–Geiger Hypothesis
Before publication of Magnus’s first study (1877a) on the development of color sensa-tion, its scholarly discussion was broadly limited to classical philological research. He and others enriched the debate, however, by introducing physiological, ethnological, and evolutionary facets.
The theory of evolutionary change is in first place influenced by Lamarck, who denied invariability of species and attributed changes to the pressure for an animal to adapt itself in an optimal way to its habitat such that corresponding change in an organ’s structure, which would be inherited, would depend on frequency of the organ’s use.12
. “The living strength of different colors should be regarded as the guiding principle of the evolution of color sense” (Magnus 1877b: 19, our translation). Hirschberg (1877: 111) offers a short summary. This first publication by Magnus on color sense instigated such reverberations in the scientific world that merited its translation to French (Magnus 1878g).
. The coincidence with the modified Berlin & Kay scheme (Kay 1975: 260) that introduces the categorygrue (cool), unifying the colors green and blue, cannot be ignored. Thegruecategory appears first at Stage IIIa of their scheme.
. “In the evolution of animals, the progression in the composition of the organization sometimes undergoes anomalies due to the influence of circumstances of habitation and adopted habits” (Lamarck 1809: 134–135, our translation). “The frequent use of an organ, becoming regular because of habits, increases the organ’s faculty; it
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Darwin also supported the evolution of species but explained it with natural selection:
Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagina-tion insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following proposiimagina-tions, namely, – that gradations in the perfection of any organ or instinct which we may con-sider, either do now exist or could have existed, each good of its kind, – that all organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree, variable, – and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of each profitable derivation of structure or instinct.
The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed. (Darwin 1859/1996: 371) Magnus (1877a: 44) saw the basic principle for his theory in the generally accepted fact that all organic forms tend to develop from a relatively low initial level, to perfection.13Even though calling himself an adherent of Darwin,14Magnus found himself in conflict with other adherents of Darwin’s theory.15According to Magnus and others, color perception as an evolutionary product developed over the last few thousand years. This notion is, however, no longer discussed in modern color science. Due to interventions of scholars like Ernst Krause (1877a, 1877b, 1878), Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (1879),16Anton Marty (1879), and Rudolf Hochegger (1884), who exposed gaps in this version of the theory, it was finally abandoned.17
The first objection came from Krause, who did not believe that the sense of color is such a recent acquisition among mankind: “The color-sense manifestly appears already in insects and many of the lowest vertebrates; its complete absence could therefore hardly be supposed in the very lowest race of men (1878: 120).” In his preface to the German transla-tion of Allen’sThe Colour-Sense,Krause made controversial comments reproaching Allen, Magnus, and Stein for not quoting his objections adequately. He also accused Magnus of having misinterpreted Darwin, as a differentiated color sense was already known to
develops by its use and acquires a size and a strength of action, which is lacking in animals, that less exercise it”
(Lamarck 1809: 248, our translation).
.“The probability of this assumption . . . of insensitivity to color as an original starting point of color sense can ultimately be justified by the general fact, that all organic creations, by means of a gradual evolution, raise themselves from a correspondingly low initial stage by and by to ever-greater perfection” (Magnus 1877a: 44, our translation).
. “As an advocate of the Darwinist perspective. . .” (Magnus 1881: 171, our translation).
. For modern comments on the founding fathers of evolutionary theory, see, for example, Bayertz et al. (1982);
Heinrich (1982); Kohn (1985); Lefèvre (1997); Messerly (1996); and Riedl (2003).
.For the announcement of his forthcoming study, see Allen (1878); for the German translation of Allen (1879), see Allen (1880).
. The list could have been extended: Cohn (1878a), Schroeder (1879), Zehender (1878), and Dor (1878a, 1878b, 1878c) doubted the short period of evolution, because people like the Ancient Egyptians already knew how to paint in many different colors.
Color term research of Hugo Magnus
be developed in animals. He even communicated his thoughts about this discussion to Charles Darwin, who was keenly interested in these observations, as is documented by his correspondence:
To Ernst Krause Down, June 30th, 1877.
I have been very much interested by your able argument. [Editors’ footnote: The interest felt by Mr. Darwin is recorded by the numerous pencil-marks on the margin of his copy against the belief that the sense of colour has been recently acquired by man.] The fol-lowing observation bears on this subject. I attended carefully to the mental development of many young children, and with two, or as I believe three of them, soon after they had come to the age when they knew the names of all common objects, I was startled by observ-ing that they seemed quite incapable of affixobserv-ing the right names to the colours in coloured
I have been very much interested by your able argument. [Editors’ footnote: The interest felt by Mr. Darwin is recorded by the numerous pencil-marks on the margin of his copy against the belief that the sense of colour has been recently acquired by man.] The fol-lowing observation bears on this subject. I attended carefully to the mental development of many young children, and with two, or as I believe three of them, soon after they had come to the age when they knew the names of all common objects, I was startled by observ-ing that they seemed quite incapable of affixobserv-ing the right names to the colours in coloured