Lightness and Brightness and Other Confusions

Hardin wrote the book for philosophers.
As he remarks, they are fond of
referring to colour as an illustration
about epistemological and ontological
truths, without really knowing much
about the physical and biological reality
of colour. An entertaining lesson
in scientific integrity for us all. The
book won the 1986 Johnsonian Prize
for Philosophy.
Katz, David (2002). The World of
Colour. Routledge, London.
Katz’s classic work, first published in
German as Der Aufbau der Farbwelt
in 1910, offers a phenomenological
overview of colour as it appears to us
in everyday situations. Katz’s division
of colour phenomena into eight
‘modes of appearance’ are a corner
stone of perceptual colour research.
Liljefors, A. (2005). Lighting –
Visually and Physically. Revised
edition. KTH Lighting Laboratory,
Stockholm. Liljefors’
little textbook for students of architecture
and lighting design provides an
important discussion and analysis of
the differences between visual and
physical approaches to light, and presents
a number of concepts for visual
analysis of light in its spatial context.
Merleau-Ponty M (1962/2002) The
Phenomenology of Perception.
Routledge, London and New
York. Merleau-Ponty claims that perception
is what gives us access to the
world and that the perceived world
establishes the development of the
human and social world, which is implicitly
present in all perceptions. In
this perspective he discusses the role
of the human senses. The Phenomenology
of Perception is Merleau-
Ponty’s most famous work.
Noë, Alva (2004). Action in Perception.
MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA and London, UK. Alva Noë’s
philosophical essay builds on Gibson’s
theory of the ecology of perception.
Noë extends the ideas further to include
action of the perceiver as a central
concept in the formation of visual
perception. Furthermore, he challenges
the traditional idea that our
thoughts and perceptions happen in
our brain only.
Valberg, A. (2005). Light Vision
Color. John Wiley & Sons,
Chichester. Arne Valberg in Light
Vision Color takes an interdisciplinary
approach to the visual system and
combines fundamentals behind the
visual sciences with recent developments
from neuroscience, biophysics,
psychophysics and sensory psychology.
He deals with the basic perception
of colour, light and space and discusses
perceptual experience and relevant
brain processes. He also explores
photometry, contrast sensitivity
and the relations between light,
colour and colorimetry.
SYN-TES. This book is the result of a
wider research project that involved
other aspects of colour and light and
their spatial interaction. Reports, articles
and conference papers from the
SYN-TES project (mostly in Swedish,
but some in English) can be downloaded
from www.konstfack.se/SYN-
TES.
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