Abstract

Colour, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and the eye is part of the brain. During the last forty years remarkable advances have been made into discovering what happens when light falling on the retina of the eye results in seeing. During the last three hundred years many theories have been put forward to explain how colours are perceived. Some of these have been influential in these investigations and they will be described: others such as those of Goethe and Brewster are universally rejected and will not be described.