Do tulips know they’re red?

I was blending oil pastels yesterday watching colors turn into new colors I didn’t expect. Something about that transformation felt pure. Like beauty appearing out of nothing. it felt nice.

Then the book I’m reading (Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous) messed with my peace.

It argued that color doesn’t exist outside the mind. Shape doesn’t either. Not even the tulip we’re so sure is real. What we see is the brain’s version of reality…not reality itself.

I looked at my sketch again. Was the beauty on the paper? Or inside me?

Neuroscience agrees with the philosophers: the world doesn’t arrive fully formed. The brain builds it light into color, vibration into sound, memory into meaning. We think we’re observing the world. Really, we’re constructing it.

Perception is a controlled hallucination – Anil seth

And yet, almost everyone finds a rose beautiful. Maybe because life taught us to notice color that meant food, symmetry that meant safety, softness that meant care. Maybe what we call “beautiful” is evolution and emotion agreeing on the same picture.

The strange part? The brain is both the creator and the admirer, designing the illusion and then falling for it. A blank page becomes a world, if the mind decides so.

Maybe reality isn’t something we find. Maybe it’s something we make color by color, meaning by meaning, right inside the head that wonders about it.

So… what is a tulip’s color really then?

Cheers

PS: Tulips from my collection of pastels

Check out the previous post: Passionate about other People’s Passion!

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