Practice Passage Test - 3 | Practice Passages for MCAT PDF Download

Reading William Gladstone's chapter on color in his work Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (1858) can be quite surprising for those accustomed to contemporary academic writing. The chapter introduces an extraordinary mind, but it reaches a rather unexpected conclusion: Homer and his contemporaries viewed the world with a perception closer to black and white than to vivid colors.

Undoubtedly, there exists a vast difference between Homer's world and our own. Over the millennia that separate us, empires have risen and fallen, belief systems have emerged and faded away, and science and technology have dramatically transformed our daily lives and intellectual perspectives. One might assume that the colors of nature, such as the blue of the sky and sea or the vibrant green of fresh leaves, would have remained unchanged throughout time.

However, Gladstone argues otherwise, presenting several reasons for Homer's limited perception of color. Firstly, Homer employs the same word to describe colors that we consider fundamentally different. For instance, he uses "violet" to portray the sea, sheep, and iron. Secondly, despite the rich imagery in Homer's similes, colors are noticeably absent. Even poppies, which we associate with scarlet, are devoid of color descriptions. Thirdly, Gladstone points out that Homer uses "black" around 170 times, "white" 100 times, "red" thirteen times, "yellow" ten times, "violet" six times, and mentions other colors even less frequently. Lastly, Homer's color vocabulary is astonishingly limited, lacking words for shades like orange or pink, and notably, there is no word that can be interpreted as "blue."

Furthermore, Gladstone establishes that the peculiarities observed in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were not unique to him. For example, Pindar also references "violet-colored hair" in his poems.

Gladstone acknowledges the peculiarity of his thesis—suggesting universal color blindness among the ancient Greeks—and attempts to make it more plausible by proposing an evolutionary explanation. He argues that sensitivity to colors gradually increased over generations through a progressive "education of the eye." The ability to perceive and appreciate color differences improves with practice and is passed down to offspring.

However, one might question why this progressive refinement of color vision did not occur much earlier than the time of Homer. Gladstone's theory suggests that the recognition of color as an independent property only develops when there is the capacity to manipulate colors artificially. During Homer's era, such capacity was limited; dyeing techniques were in their infancy, flower cultivation was uncommon, and brightly colored objects, which we take for granted today, were scarce. Blue objects, in particular, were rare, with blue eyes and dyes being uncommon and natural flowers in true blue being scarce.

Although Gladstone's analysis was brilliant, it ultimately veered off course. It took philologists, anthropologists, and even natural scientists decades to free themselves from the mistake of underestimating the influence of culture.