Aspects of Linguistic Awareness Related to Reading

Abstract

The author of the Iliad and the Odyssey describes an almost colorless world. So Gladstone once proposed in a London pub that color vision had evolved in mankind during historical time. I have been told that color blindness or daltonism was not described in literature until the end of the seventeenth century. Of course, the physical and physiological prerequisites for color vision have not changed essentially in the course of history. But in one sense Gladstone was probably right. There is a difference between sensation and conscious awareness of or reflection on the phenomenon of color. Our way of viewing color might well have changed since the days of Homer. Antique man probably saw the olive in the same manner as we do. For him, however, there was no need to differentiate olive green from the green olive. What use was there for having two words for what was one and the same thing in inseparable union? Why have a separate name for the color? Did he even notice it as color? To conceptually separate the color from the colored object requires more abstraction than we usually presume. Surely this operation is much facilitated by practical work with colors. The techniques of dyeing and painting have probably been of importance in the evolution of color terms. And these techniques have assuredly been developed during historical time.