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New Scientist Volume 213 Issue 2855 2012 (Doi 10.1016/S0262-4079 (12) 60645-9) Brooks, Michael - The Grosseteste Code
New Scientist Volume 213 Issue 2855 2012 (Doi 10.1016/S0262-4079 (12) 60645-9) Brooks, Michael - The Grosseteste Code
of colour
Did a 13th-century English
bishop understand what makes
our world such a gaudy place,
asks Michael Brooks
ODERN science
has a simple story.
It began in the
Renaissance with
the revolutionary
observations of
Copernicus and
Galileo, and
flowered in the Age of Enlightenment
with Robert Boyles meticulous chemical
experiments and Isaac Newtons
ordering of the clockwork cosmos.
That picture is so commonplace that
we risk being hoodwinked by it, says
physicist Tom McLeish of the University
of Durham, UK. So much coffee-book
history represents science as an
Enlightenment phenomenon, and
everything before as mystical alchemy
and darkness, he says. McLeish is part of
the Ordered Universe collaboration, a
grouping of scientists and historians
based at Durham that is gathering
evidence for a different story.
Now they have a star witness for their
case Robert Grosseteste, a 13th-century
English churchman and scholar who
ended up as bishop of Lincoln.
Grosseteste has long been seen as a preRenaissance Renaissance man, who
wrote about everything from sound to
comets and stars. But it is an essay on the
Colour is a difficult
concept to pin down:
what makes the infinite
array of hues we see?
previous thought. First, Grosseteste says,
colours do not exist by themselves, but
are a property of the interactions of light
and matter: Colour is light incorporated
in a diaphanous medium, as he puts it.
Second, colours are made by sliding
along three scales: from clara to obscura;
from multa to pauca; and from purum
to impurum. Whiteness, he adds, is an
extreme produced by the combination
of clara, multa and purum. This
IMPURUM
IMPURUM
PURUM
BLACK BLACK
PURUM
A
UR
SC
B
O
A
UR
SC
OB
PAU
CA
MU
RAL
RA
LTA M
AU
CL TA CLA
WHITE WHITE
Grosseteste's
theory oftheory
colourof
clearly
Grosseteste's
colour clearly
implies aimplies
cubic colour
space
with
white
a cubic
colour
space
with white
and blackand
at diagonally
oppositeopposite
corners, corners,
black at diagonally
but otherbut
details
otherremain
detailsobscure
remain obscure
PAU
CA
A
MU
L A LAR
C A with
MU Tsit
he says. I feel as if I could
down
LTA LAR
WHITE
C
n
him and chat over a glass of mead.
PURUM
PURUMIMPURUM
IMPURUM
ACHROMATIC AXIS
ACHROMATIC
AXIS
ACHROMATIC
AXIS
ACHROMATIC AXIS
shows
Grosseteste
was abreast of the
G
S
R
ENN
EN
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ES
ESSE
NE
NESS
DN
latest
mathematical
developments:
D
E
E
R
R
Arabic numerals only reached Europe in
BLACK BLACK
1202 with the publication of Liber Abaci,
HUE
HUE
a treatise by the Italian mathematician
Fibonacci. They were still unfamiliar to
Grossetestes later transcriber, who
interpreted 14 as IX in Roman numerals
and wrote novem, the Latin for nine.
Television
and computer
screens build
up build up
Another Another
3D depiction
of the palette
an uses an
Television
and computer
screens
3D depiction
of theuses
palette
To investigate
the other
stain
on
the full palette
of
colours
using
the
three
"achromatic"
axis fromaxis
white
to white
black,
plus
a plus a
the full palette of colours using the three
"achromatic"
from
to
black,
Grossetestes
reputation,
Gasper
had
dimensions
of red, green
and
blueand blue
plane
where
hue
varies
around
axis and
dimensions
of red,
green
plane
where
hue
variesthe
around
the
axisto
and
saturation
increases
with distance
from
travel
to the National
Library
ofitSpain
saturation
increases
with distance
fromin
it
Madrid to seek out the earliest surviving
description is very similar to the way we
version of the manuscript. I was heart in
regard colour today. At the conceptual
mouth, hoping it would work out, says
level Grossetestes writings show a very
McLeish. And it did. There, in the
strong resonance with modern views of
description of blackness, was the missing
colour, says Hannah Smithson, a
impurum the final proof, think the
perceptional psychologist at the
researchers, that Grosseteste worked as
University of Oxford and a member of
meticulously and methodically, and with
the Ordered Universe team.
just as sure a grasp of mathematical
It is difficult to assess the bishops
logic, as any true scientist after him
ideas more rigorously as he does not
(Journal of the Optical Society of America
define his terms precisely. A LatinA, vol 29, p 346).
English dictionary might give clear,
Gasper believes it is not just the
dark, much, little, pure and
presumed errors that have made us
impure as translations, but how would overlook Grossetestes abilities, but also
these match up with modern ways of
the fact that he did not present his
specifying colour? Weve had guesses:
conclusions in a way that looks
we talked about whether the dimensions
hes talking about are lightness, or
something corresponding to saturation
BLUENESS
or hue, for example,
says Smithson.
BLUENESS
But its not easy to
find a very
satisfactory mapping.
The team is convincedWHITE
there is more to
SATURATION
WHITE
Grosseteste than
justGguesswork.
SATURATION
R
S
E
E
S
NNE
E
G
REEN SSthe text
N SSlargely dismissed
ScholarsEDhad
NES
E
R DNbecause
on colour
of
two
basicSerrors.
E
R
First, workingBLACK
out how colours can be
BLACK
HUE
combined, he gets a key number wrong,
HUE
coming up with nine when the correct
figure is 14. Second, if white is clara,
multa and purum, black should be its
polar opposite: obscura, pauca and
Television and computer screens build up
Another 3D depiction of the palette uses an
impurum.
Grosseteste,
though,
has
it
Television
and computer
build
up
Another
3D depiction
the palette
uses
ana
the full palette
of coloursscreens
using the
three
"achromatic"
axis fromofwhite
to black,
plus
down
as just
obscura
and
the
full palette
colours
the three
"achromatic"
to black,
plus
a
dimensions
ofof
red,
greenusing
andpauca.
blue
plane where axis
hue from
varieswhite
around
the axis
and
dimensions
of red,
green and blue
plane
where
hue varies
around
the from
axis and
It turns out
Grosseteste
was simply the
saturation
increases
with
distance
it
saturation increases with distance from it
victim of bad editing. For unknown
WHITE
Grosseteste's theory of colour
clearly
Grosseteste's
colour
clearly
implies a cubictheory
colourof
space
with
white
Michael Brooks
is
aatconsultant
for
New
implies
a cubic
colour space
with corners,
white
and black
diagonally
opposite
black
at
diagonally
Scientist and
andother
the author
ofremain
Freeopposite
Radicals:
The
but
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but other
details remain obscure
Secret Anarchy
of Science