What The Classics Know Of Blue

I was quite curious after reading on Business Insider (link below) that stated that we couldn't see the color blue until modern times, which was proven by the analysis done in 1858 by a scholar named William Gladstone.

To paraphrase, Gladstone decided to count the color references in Homer's Odyssey and in other ancient Greek texts and concluded that 'blue' wasn't mentioned. This analysis was followed up by a philologist named Lazarus Geiger, who studied Icelandic sagas, the Koran, ancient Chinese stories, and the Bible who also ultimately concluded that there was no mention of 'blue'.

Fascinated by this, I decided to write a program to analyze the texts these scholars had chosen. Since there were no sources listed of the texts used, I made use of the texts available from Project Gutenberg, along with other books deemed by western civilization to be classic pieces of literature to see if this really was true.

Since it is also not stated if these scholars analyzed the texts written in the original language, I made do with what was available. Given the source texts that were used, it turns out that both Gladstone and Geiger should have found several references to the color blue.

It would have been appreciated if the author of the piece had included sources so that a deeper analysis could have taken place.

References

The Harvard Classics Bookshelf

All associated files of various formats can be found at: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics_(Bookshelf)

These eBooks are for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with these eBooks or online at www.gutenberg.org

No one could see the color blue until modern times

Published on Business Insider by Kevin Loria on Feb. 27, 2015.

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

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