A Rational Cosmology: Color as a Property Intrinsic to Entities

Now that the cosmological underpinnings of the phenomenon of light have been explained, it is possible to rationally analyze the type of existent that the concept of "color" denotes.

It is ubiquitously known that not all entities react to light in the same way. Aside from an entity's spatial contours and motion, the entities that light illuminates exhibit another property that allows some of them (or parts of them) to appear differently than do others to the observer.

This is a property intrinsic to the entities, even though light is needed to make it accessible to the eye, as demonstrated by the manner in which this property will be exhibited given various types of illumination.

A ball called "red" will appear red under white light, black under blue light or green light, and red under red light. Physics has explained this to mean that the ball absorbs blue and green light (and any combination thereof) and reflects red light into the eye of the observer. Whenever red light is present, it will reflect only red light, and only of a certain specific "wavelength" (a misnamed unit, as previously explained) that denotes the "shade" of red the ball possesses.

The ability to reflect only red light is a property possessed by the ball, independent of what sort of illumination it is presently subjected to. Other balls might be blue or green, and thus have entirely different abilities to reflect only blue or green light, and not red light, as the former ball. Other balls still might have the ability to reflect two fundamental types of light and therefore be colored violet, or yellow, or orange, or to reflect all light and therefore be colored white.

This difference among the balls cannot be explained by merely stating that they are subject to the same, or to different, types of light. Color is thus not a relationship, as no other entity is involved in determining it other than the entity exhibiting it (within the given frame of reference, which treats each ball as an entity in itself). Rather, color is a quality, i.e., that which an entity has and is measurable, via the electromagnetic spectrum.

Color is different from sound in that, while sound requires an observer (a listener) to be fully manifested, color does not. The quality of "the color red" merely informs us that the entity is capable of reflecting only red light. In total darkness, the observer will not be able to see the red entity, but the entity will remain capable of reflecting only red light, nonetheless, even though no red light currently exists for it to reflect.

Since color is existentially independent of illumination, it is not dependent on being seen to exist. The ability to reflect red light, when red light is present, does not change when different types of light are present.

It is instructive to note that this definition of color as a quality intrinsic to entities means that an entity's color does not necessarily equal its present appearance of color, i.e., its appearance under the light that happens to be emitted by an available source. A black entity (which does not reflect any light) is quite different from an entity that simply appears black merely because the type of light it has the ability to reflect happens to be absent.

The true indicator of an entity's color is its appearance under white light, i.e., light that combines all measures of the electromagnetic spectrum and thus necessarily includes all the types of light the entity could possibly reflect. Thus, it is always possible to objectively know an entity's color by illuminating it with white light, even though the illumination itself does not equal the color.

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