In the late 1980’s and throughout the 1990’s I worked as a part time lecturer at the Norwegian National College of Arts and Design, namely Statens Håndverks- og Kunstindustriskole (SHKS), in Oslo. I wrote two books based on my lectures, one about esthetical argumentation and one about perception, knowledge and science in the visual arts:
- Analytisk Estetikk eller Jakten på Skjønnheten – Tell forlag 1992.
- Se –persepsjon, erkjennelse og vitenskap i visuelle kunstfag – Tell forlag 1994.
From 1992 I have worked as a lecturer at the University of Oslo, namely in the common obligatory course Examen Philosophicum, which nowadays consists of two parts, namely history of philosophy and science, and ethical theory.
I have always had a special interest in colour theory, mainly from a philosophical point of view. The focus of my magisterial thesis from 1985, at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo (UiO) was to explore Goethe’s theory of colours in the light of theory of science and epistemology.
In the latest years I have been working on a thesis on the ontology of colours and during this time I have lectured in a ten credits bachelor course at the UiO, called Colour Philosophy (Norwegian: Fargefilosofi) – which introduces different colour theories, within for example Aristotelian, Newtonian and Phenomenological traditions.
The methodological foundation of my thesis is inspired by and partly gathered from George Berkeley’s book An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, and the practical means developed is the formal method, which is formal, first because it does not rely on causal determinations of colours and, second, because it does not conceptualize particular colours.
If interested, you may consider two small pieces of text with illustrations, collected from the thesis: Text and Pictures
Tags:
Philosophy,
Ex.phil
Publications
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Øijord, Aksel (2019). On the ontology of colours: Are colours heterogeneous or homogeneous? Are they two-dimensional or three-dimensional?.
Show summary
My answer to the first question that is posed in the title of this thesis is that colours are homogeneous, which means each and every colour is only one in number. This means that colours are not heterogeneous, that is, they are not compounds or mixtures. For example: orange is often said to be red and yellow, and grey is often said to be white and black. In other words: orange and grey are both claimed to be heterogeneous. However, my conclusion that colours are homogeneous simply excludes that heterogeneity can be the case. My answer to the second question is that colours are two-dimensional, which means that colours stretch out in length and breadth, but not in depth. This conclusion gainsays naïve realistic conceptions about colours, for example that they can be objects like a piece of blue cobalt, or that there can be voluminous coloured light beams passing in three-dimensional space from a light source and, when they hit objects, mix with their colours. For example, one use to say that yellow and purple beams colour a landscape at sunset. The conclusion on two-dimensionality also gainsays the more sophisticated theory of identification of colours with brain events. That is, colours cannot be identified with brain events because the latter are threedimensional while the former are two-dimensional. These two conclusions are drawn from three general propositions, which I call Basic Suppositions. The first says there is concomitance between colours and their extensions. This means that any colour has a certain extension and that this extension cannot be separated from the colour itself. It follows that colours are homogeneous because if heterogeneous, like the contention on orange, the implication will be orange is twice its own extension, and this contradicts the first basic supposition. The second says that colours can only relate beside each other. This basic supposition gainsays naïve realistic conceptions which include that colours might exist behind each other and have different directions in three-dimensional space. The third says that only colours can limit colours, which means there can be no empty space or “clear air” between any two colours, i.e., it cannot be a blank or a gap between them, which is not a colour. In addition, my inquiry results in two other basic suppositions, namely that colours might be identical notwithstanding difference in figure, size or position, and that two or more different colours cannot be identical with one and the same colour. All these propositions will be clarified and defended in the discussion to follow.
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Published Dec. 14, 2010 2:52 PM
- Last modified Apr. 1, 2020 2:52 PM
