Martha Stewart Living

Been sorting my library, and got hit by a question: "whatever happened to the Hermenaut?"

burnco: Wait! WITT, what color do *you* recommend for a baby's room?

M[artha]S[tewart]L[ive]: People, I really don't think Mr. WITT here is qualified to answer these kinds of questions... Let ME do the recommending in this chatroom. Now, does anyone have a specific question?

GOETHE: Colors are infused with just these mystical Properties! Don't you see that they are themselves the very stuff of Spirit, extending into the World? We become acquainted with their Ways in their infinite Variations, in their Struggles, which are the Struggles of Shadow and Light themselves!

MSL: That's not even a question!

WITT: Herr Goethe, please: I have thought of color as a kind of arithmetic. I mean that color terms have been used to talk in a kind of shorthand about the world, without having to deal with the set of all things that are the case. But with these colors, Cornflower and Scone, which are also names of things, there is no arithmetic, no system. Here we have as many colors as there are objects in the world.

GOETHE: But these are the Practitioner's own terms, mein gute Freund. It makes an enormous Difference which Route to Understanding you choose in these Things. To those who use Color, these Words have Meanings and Significances, which are inadmissable to the Mathematician or Physicist. We are not discussing the Physics of Light, you see, but the Phenomena of Color.

WITT: The problem is not the question of physical laws but of how we talk about these things in the first place. Cornflower: presumably it changes with the seasons and from flower to flower. Is a cornflower blue on a moonless night? NO—although hair may be blonde in a black-and-white photo, or a white piece of paper appear grey when placed on newly fallen snow. The language game of color as we usually play it allows for such—I want to say "multiplications"; they increase the "amplitude" of that which may be spoken. But this cornflower—color animism—by multipyling the names we speak for color, the amplitude of the words which can be spoken about color diminishes. More words, only they're passing through a narrow opening, without relating to one another.

MSL: I am sorry, but I must break in again here. Do either of you have a room to paint? A rug to choose? We can even talk about cool and warm color choices for one's wardrobe—but if you don't have a question like this, I really have to move on to someone else. Now.

For more, check out The Hermenaut. Sort of a real-world example of what happens when intellectuals start roaming loose...

The quotes above come from the "article" "Farbe Schwatzen" by Matthew Battles (4/4/01)