2.4 Remarks On Colour Perception
The existence of name strategy as discussed above can be interpreted as show-
ing that thought can exist without words, but when words do occur they can
influence thoughts in a quantifiable way. The effect of moving away from a
difference boundary occurs not only in anthropology and psychology but in life
science also: Lack (1947) [24] points out that two heavy billed finches Geospiza
fortis and Geospiza fulinginasa, both have bills of approximately equal size when
they are the only heavy billed finch on an island, however when they both occur
on the same island the bill of one is much larger than the other. Brown (1976)
[4] p.152 after noting the existence of colour foci universals and the ab ove five
properties of colour perception states
”The fascinating irony of this research is that it began in a spirit of
strong relativitism and linguistic determinism and has now come to
a position of cultural universalism and linguistic insignificance.”
This suggests the possibility that there are universal perceptions and that it is
the words superimposed upon them that enhance the cluster properties men-
tioned by Wittgenstein (1958) [51] p.31; such cluster properties are characteris-
tic of concept formation, see for example Hampton (1979) [16] and Nuyts and
Pederson (1997) [34], and occur not only for humans but also for other animals,
for example pigeons have a concept of what a tree is, see for example Hernstein
(1985) [17]. Note that, Scriven (1997) [39], Black, Brown, White, Grey, and
Green are prevalent surnames, but Blue, Red, Yellow, and Purple are not; this
seems to be also independent of the Berlin-Kay ordering.
3 Name Strategy in Object Perception
3.1 Object Perception
It has been noted by Carmichael, Hogan, and Walter (1932) [6], that language
has an effect on visually perceived forms. They constructed a number of exper-
iments involving drawn figures that are midway between two clearly delineated
objects, some of their examples include: a figure which is half way between a
crescent moon and the letter ”c”, and a number which is half way between a
two and an eight, etc .... They claim on p.83, that their experiments:
”tend to substantiate the view that not the visual form alone, but
the method of its apprehension by the subject determines, at least
in certain cases, the nature of its reproduction.”
and their final conclusion on p.83, is that:
”to some extent at least, the reproduction of forms may be deter-
mined by the nature of the words presented orally to the sub ject at
the time that they are first perceiving specific visual forms.”