It is imposible to identify color with radiant energy, or with wave-lengths of radiant energy, although radiant energy is the adequate stimulus for color. This is because color is known to depend upon the presence and character of the perceiving individual and because it is directly recognized to be something radically different in kind from its stimuli. Consequently, nothing but confusion can result from the use of the word “‘color” as a synonym
monochromatic, dichromatic, trichromatic, photochromatic, etc., will be taken to refer to colors possessing hue and saturation or to the stimulus or organic conditions underlying the production of such colors. The root, chroma, and its derivatives provide us with a well established and hence constantly available means for differentiating between color in a restricted sense and members of the gray series, while “color” and its derivatives provide us with a means for designating both of these meanings together. Some difficulties of course arise and must be met courageously by bold changes in usage. Fortunately the cases in question are not very important. For example, “chromatics” can no longer be regarded as synonymous with “colorimetry,” chromatics being strictly the science of hue and saturation coördinate with photometry, if the latter is also regarded as a sub-division of colorimetry. The term “colorless” cannot be regarded as the equivalent of “achromatic” and must be taken to indicate complete transparency as well as achromaticity in an object. This is probably already the most common meaning of the term. The equivalent of the phrase “a colored object” in the common restricted usage of the term color would be “a chromed object.” The phrase “color vision” becomes redundant and must be replaced by “chromatic vision.” The terms relating to “color-blindness” may need some revision but the most common forms of this disorder are already designated as partial color-blindness, a designation quite in harmony with our usage of the term color. However, “total color-blindness” would be the equivalent of “complete blindness” on this basis and hence the word achromatopia, already in use, will be necessary in this instance. It is the opinion of the Committee that the above suggestions, although necessitating a number of radical changes, involve a minimum of such changes among the possibilities which are open to us in improving the nomenclature of color science. However, the recommendations of the present report are intended to be tentative and the Committee will be glad to listen to alternative proposals and to objections to the particular form taken by the present suggestions, which represent a compromise between strongly opposed factions, all well represented in the Committee.
