Start by thinking of the colour spectrum . Visible light – red , orange , yellow , green , aristocratic , indigo , and violet – is the chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes are able to comprehend . Unlike most colors we come across , we can not represent pink with a single absolute frequency of visible radiation . There is no P in ROYGBIV . It ’s not quite flushed , but it ’s certainly not violet . Instead , it ’s a combining of a few wavelengths .
If you are stare at a big ball of pink bubblegum , you are not just experience a bunch of pinkish light wavelengths hitting the back of your eyeball . You are witnessing a splurge of different reflected wavelength , primarily cherry-red and white , which your wit is piecing together and comprehend as pink .
So , a true pink wavelength of light does n’t exist , but does this mean that garden pink is n’t a color ?
" Of course pinkish is a gloss , " Jill Morton , an expert in color theory and colour psychological science , toldPopular Sciencein 2012 , " but with that said , pink is indeed not part of the light spectrum . It ’s an excess - spectral color , and it has to be fuse to generate it . "
If you ’re sticking to the rules of the electromagnetic spectrum , it might be more accurate to call pinkish “ a tint of loss ” . As you may see in the image below , our perception of people of color is not as simple as a linear spectrum , it also involves tints ( added light values ) and shades ( added dark time value ) . By adding tincture to Bolshevik , we lighten up the color , as well as tilt it towards the blue end of the spectrum and invest it with a different character . We call this lineament " pinkish " .
This is where stuff will start to fathom like a stoned guy teaching a school of thought family for beginners and clumsily spread out up a can of metaphysical worms . But hey , here we go : Do we define a color by slapping a label on the sensation in our mind ? When we think of it like this , all " colors " – indeed , all sensation – are just abstractions based on interpretations of the body and thinker that ca n’t be outside of the ocular system .
" Color is not in reality a place of light or of objects that meditate luminosity , it is a sensory faculty that arises within the brain , " biologist Timothy H Goldsmith explains in aScientific Americanarticle in 2006 .
