2, colorful, which is about to start from the ancient Chinese people's understanding of color. As early as the Neolithic Age, people already knew how to use natural mineral plants to make original pigments. It can be seen from the painted pottery unearthed from Xi 'an Banpo site that its patterns are depicted in three colors: red, white and black. Painted pottery unearthed from Qujialing site in Jingshan, Hubei Province has brown and orange patterns. On the other hand, farming and weaving in ancient times was the most important means of survival. China first invented silk and applied it to the silk industry. Corresponding to textile, the printing and dyeing industry in China developed earlier. According to ancient records, as early as two or three thousand years ago, China's dyeing technology had reached a high level, and there were dyers specializing in dyeing. The influence of silk dyeing on color is manifested in the production of a series of color words with the meaning of "".The color words recorded in Shuowen are: iron, Iraq, cyan, pale, _, Iraq, scarlet, scarlet, ten thousand, Iraq, _, twips, _, purple, red, _, Yan, _,. New appendices are: Yan, Fei, _. The ancients observed the differences of color categories very carefully, even very similar colors should be distinguished in detail.
3. With the passage of time, the ancients began to classify colors basically, and the concept of "five colors" came into being. "Five-color theory" is produced under the influence of China's traditional "Five Elements Theory". "Five elements theory" is a basic idea of China's ancient philosophy. Five elements refer to five basic substances: wood, gold, fire, water and earth. On the basis of the five elements, ancient philosophers and thinkers developed the five elements-East, West, South, North and China. Five elements can be matched with five colors. "Book of Rites Jade Algae" Confucius quoted the cloud of Yellow: "It means yellow, red, blue, white and black, and the five sides are positive colors." According to Yu Gong in Shangshu, five colors refer to five colors: blue, red, yellow, white and black. This is probably the earliest record of five colors. With the continuous consolidation and improvement of the status of the five elements theory, the five colors theory gradually formed a fixed model in the ancient people's ideas.
The ancients thought that although everything in the universe is different in thousands ways, it can all be summed up in five elements. Based on this idea, they think that all kinds of colorful products are also composed of five colors. As the saying goes, "When the color is no more than five, the transformation of five colors is invincible" (The Art of War by Sun Tzu). Zhou Li Kao Gong Ji's Painting: "The painting is mixed with five colors. The east is green, the south is red, the west is white, the north is black, the sky is mysterious and the land is yellow. " The five colors and five directions come from the five elements, which, like the five elements, are the simple materialistic view of nature of the ancients, in order to illustrate the composition and movement law of things. Five colors refer to what the ancients called positive colors. In addition to the five positive colors, the ancients also said the middle color.
5, "Book of Rites Jade Algae" Kong Yinhuang's cloud: "The five parties are different. So are green, red, blue, purple and yellow. "The ancients thought that Huang Qing was green, red and white was red, blue and white was blue, red and black was purple, yellow and black was yellow. The theory of "positive color-intermediate color" can be considered to have something in common with the modern theory of "three primary colors" From the perspective of modern chromatics, orthochromatic is indeed an important basic color. At present, blue, red and Huang San pigments are still widely used in printing, dyeing and painting technology, and are blended into various colors in different proportions, so they are called "three primary colors". As for black and white, they are regarded as the two ends that determine the brightness of color. The ancients defined cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black as "positive colors", which is a correct understanding and application of basic colors.
6. The distinction between "positive color" and "intermediate color" is related to political activities. At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, patriarchal clan system prevailed, and Confucian ethics based on hierarchy advocated that all social relations should not go beyond hierarchy, in order to achieve a social order of "equality between the rich and the poor and differences between the old and the young" (Xunzi's Book of Rites). Confucianism advocates etiquette, the core of which is not condescending, but noble and humble. Reflected in the color, that is, the positive color is respected and the middle color is humble. The color of clothing has obvious levels, and the color of clothing is very particular. In order to maintain the etiquette system of the Zhou Dynasty, Confucius once tried to belittle purple. The "hometown party" in the Analects of Confucius: "A gentleman does not regard it as an ornament, and red and purple do not think it is obscene." That is, purple, purple, red and purple are all intermediate colors, and they are not used by gentlemen as the colors of sacrificial clothes and casual clothes. "Evil purple captures Zhu Ye" (The Analects of Yang Huo).
7. The five-color theory undoubtedly has its progressive significance. However, with the development of optical knowledge, the concept of five colors made it impossible for the ancients to objectively describe and analyze colorful light dispersion phenomena.
8. There are two common dispersion phenomena in nature: rainbow and crystal scattering. "Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, keep the colors and train the dance." Rainbow has been loved by people since ancient times, and it was observed and understood as early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. For example, the description of the rainbow in the poem "Songs of the South" says: "The magnificent rainbow is colorful and dazzling." Kong pointed out in the early Tang Dynasty that "sunshine and raindrops" were the causes of rainbows. Sun Yanxian of the Song Dynasty explained: "Rainbow is a remnant of the shadow of the sun, but there are both sunshine and rain." A hundred years later, Zhu further pointed out: "Rainbow can't stop rainy nights, but the rain gas is already thin, which is also the color of rain gas scattered by the sun." This is one or two hundred years earlier than Bacon (12 14 ~ 1294) claimed that rainbows were caused by countless water drops in the air. Cheng Dachang made a detailed observation on the dispersion phenomenon of a single water drop in the Southern Song Dynasty, and wrote in Fan Yanlu: "When the rain starts on the temples, or the dew doesn't cry, the rest spots are gathered at the ends of the branches and leaves of flowers and trees, all of which are covered with bright and gratifying colors, flickering. It is the light of the sun that is colored in the water, not the rain and dew that have these five colors. "
9. Rainbow is a natural dispersion phenomenon. About the formation of rainbows, it was not until 300 years ago that Czech scientist Marki used triangular pillars B instead of glass to disperse sunlight into rainbows that he got a more scientific explanation.
10, about the phenomenon of crystal dispersion, in fact, more than 400 years earlier than Marchi. China medical scientist Kou Zongshuang's Yi Yan of Materia Medica (published in119) records that the sunlight is dispersed into five-color round lamps with bodhisattva stones: "The Emei stone in Jiazhou, which looks like Wutai Mountain stone, is a famous bodhisattva stone in the cave.
1 1, it is clearly pointed out in the records of Cole Department Store in the United States that this stone is a transparent hexagonal crystal, indicating that it is not only the prism that causes dispersion. Later, Mount Emei written by Chen Zai in Ming Dynasty 1575 and Travel Notes written by Wang Zai in Tiantai in Ming Dynasty 1588 also recorded this kind of stone scattering phenomenon. The latter not only saw and collected this kind of "luminous stone", but also pointed out the process that the gap between bronze drums was irradiated by sunlight. Since then, Li Shizhen, a great scientist in Ming Dynasty, recorded this kind of "Bodhisattva Stone" in Compendium of Materia Medica: Bodhisattva Stone, also known as sharping Stone. There is also a "bodhisattva stone" in the department of epigraphy, which indicates that it can scatter sunlight and its value in medicine.
12, the Northern Song Dynasty's "Yang Wengong Yuan Tan" records: "Shangrao crystal and the like, the sun shines in five colors." Fang Yizhi, a famous scholar in the late Ming Dynasty, made a comprehensive summary of various dispersion phenomena observed by predecessors. He wrote in "Introduction to Physics": "Where a gem has a convex surface, it will turn into light. If it has several edges, it will have five-color surfaces. Such as Mount Emei sharping stone, six sides also; Crystal paper, three sides also; Burn three-sided crystals, which are also five colors. The canyon shot the flying spring into five colors; People spray water on the sun between the back walls, which is also colorful. So we know that the color of the rainbow, the halo of the stars and the moon, and the five-color clouds are all the same. "
13. As can be seen from the above, China's ancient dispersion theory is based on the five-color theory. The ancients realized that sunlight scattered by transparent body produced five colors. This is the level of understanding reached by our country from the Warring States to the early Qing Dynasty. Before the Qin and Han Dynasties, China's understanding of rainbow dispersion was comparable to that of the western countries represented by Aristotle, and the creation time of Chu Ci was basically the same as Aristotle's life. However, after more than 2,000 years of observation and research, Fang Yizhi's descriptions of chromatic dispersion phenomena such as rainbows still retain the five-color theory. However, after the same period of research in the west, the correct seven-color theory was obtained, and the mechanism of dispersion phenomenon was successfully explained by reflection and refraction theory. As far as reliable documentary evidence is concerned, China and the West are roughly the same, from around the 4th century BC to the mid-7th century AD/KLOC-0; As far as practical experience is concerned, many people have observed and studied various dispersion phenomena in China from pre-Qin to Qing Dynasty, and accumulated no less empirical knowledge and historical materials than in the West; As far as research methods are concerned, both China and the West have used observation and experiment methods. Cheng Dachang's observation and research on a single water drop is about 500 years earlier than Descartes' B glass water polo experiment. Therefore, in these respects, China is by no means inferior to the West. There are probably two reasons why China failed to achieve the same results as the West: first, China didn't know enough about the refraction properties of ancient light, and second, he was bound by the concept of five elements and five colors. The former influenced the ancients' in-depth understanding of dispersion mechanism, while the latter restricted the ancients' careful observation and description of dispersion phenomenon.
14 and five-color theory, on the one hand, reflect the ancients' advanced understanding of color, on the other hand, restrict the development of dispersion science.