Seeing color through Homer's eyes
- Dashboard
- Seeing color through Homer's eyes
Most Recent Score Report
| Questions Correct | Questions Answered | Time Spent | Status | Attempt Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
Previous Score Reports
| Questions Correct | Questions Answered | Time Spent | Status | Attempt Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
Seeing color through Homer's eyes
Array
(
[passage] => WP_Post Object
(
[ID] => 559741
[post_author] => 12815
[post_date] => 2025-01-01 11:33:00
[post_date_gmt] => 2025-01-01 16:33:00
[post_content] => Practice Passage (Question 1-4)
*This passage is the property of Khan Academy and has been reformatted into an AAMC-style interface in their entirety by MedLife Mastery. MedLife Mastery does not endorse and is not an affiliate of Khan Academy.
For someone used to contemporary academic writing, reading the chapter on color in William Gladstone’s Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (1858) comes as rather a shock—the shock of meeting an extraordinary mind. It is therefore all the more startling that Gladstone’s nineteenth century tour de force comes to such a strange conclusion: Homer and his contemporaries perceived the world in something closer to black and white than to full Technicolor.
No one would deny that there is a wide gulf between Homer’s world and ours: in the millennia that separate us, empires have risen and fallen, religions and ideologies have come and gone, and science and technology have transformed our intellectual horizons and almost every aspect of daily life beyond all recognition. Surely one aspect that must have remained exactly the same since Homer’s day, even since time immemorial, would be the rich colors of nature: the blue of sky and sea, the glowing red of dawn, the green of fresh leaves.
Gladstone says things are not the same, for many reasons. One, Homer uses the same word to denote colors which, according to us, are essentially different. For example, he describes as “violet” the sea, sheep, and iron. Two, Homer’s similes are so rich with sensible imagery, we expect to find color a frequent and prominent ingredient, and yet his poppies have never so much as a hint of scarlet. Three, Gladstone notes, Homer uses “black” about 170 times, “white” 100 times, “red” thirteen, “yellow” ten, “violet” six times, and the other colors even less often. Four, Homer’s color vocabulary is astonishingly small. There doesn’t seem to be anything equivalent to our orange or pink in Homer’s color palette; most striking is the lack of any word that could be taken to mean “blue.”
What is more, Gladstone proves that the oddities in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey could not have stemmed from any problems peculiar to Homer. “Violet-colored hair” was used by Pindar in his poems.
Gladstone is well aware of the utter weirdness of his thesis—nothing less than universal color blindness among the ancient Greeks—so he tries to make it more palatable by evoking an evolutionary explanation for how sensitivity to colors could have increased over the generations. The perception of color, he says, seems natural to us only because humankind as a whole has undergone a progressive “education of the eye” over the last millennia. The eye’s ability to perceive and appreciate differences in color, he suggests, can improve with practice, and these acquired improvements are then passed on to offspring.
But why, one may well ask, should this progressive refinement of color vision not have started much earlier than the Homeric period? Gladstone’s theory is that the appreciation of color as a property independent of a particular material develops only with the capacity to manipulate colors artificially. And that capacity, he notes, barely existed in Homer’s day: the art of dyeing was in its infancy, cultivation of flowers was not practiced, and almost all of the brightly colored objects we take for granted were entirely absent. Other than the ocean, people in Homer’s day may have gone through life without ever setting their eyes on a single blue object. Blue eyes, Gladstone explains, were in short supply; blue dyes, which are very difficult to manufacture, were practically unknown; and natural flowers that are truly blue are rare.
Gladstone’s analysis was brilliant, but completely off course. Indeed, philologists, anthropologists, and even natural scientists would need decades to free themselves from the error of underestimating the power of culture.
Adapted from G. Deutscher, Through the language glass: why the world looks different in other languages. ©2010 Metropolitan Books.
[post_title] => Seeing color through Homer's eyes
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => seeing-color-through-homers-eyes
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2025-01-01 11:33:00
[post_modified_gmt] => 2025-01-01 16:33:00
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] => https://medlifemastery.com/?post_type=passage&p=559741
[menu_order] => 0
[post_type] => passage
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw
)
[questions] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[quiz_unique_key] => 578908434
[question] => It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes which of the following about contemporary academic writing?
[value] => Array
(
[answer] => 1
[description] => Reason for the Correct Answer:
This is a “Foundations of Comprehension” question, which means that it wants you to understand the author’s central theme or idea or point of view.
The author begins the passage by saying that “For someone used to contemporary academic writing, reading the chapter on color in William Gladstone’s Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (1858) comes as rather a shock—the shock of meeting an extraordinary mind” (paragraph 1). If someone used to reading contemporary academic writing is shocked at reading something extraordinary, then the implication is that academic papers are typically not especially brilliant (option A). The passage does not directly deal with the prevalence of color perception as content in academic writing (option B). The author refers to the strange conclusion that Gladstone reaches as being shocking, but does not assert that the conclusions of most academic writing are very strange (option C). The author does not discuss the idea that papers may quickly become outdated (option D).
Thus, option A is correct.
)
[answers] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[each_answer] => A. Academic papers are typically not especially brilliant.
)
[1] => Array
(
[each_answer] => B. Academics seldom address color perception in their papers.
)
[2] => Array
(
[each_answer] => C. Academics often reach very strange conclusions in their papers.
)
[3] => Array
(
[each_answer] => D. Academic papers are usually outdated soon after they are written.
)
)
)
[1] => Array
(
[quiz_unique_key] => 3873426850
[question] => It has been suggested that the Iliad and the Odyssey were a patchwork of a great number of popular ballads woven together from different poets, rather than a single work by a poet named Homer. If true, how would this affect the opinions expressed in the passage?
[value] => Array
(
[answer] => 1
[description] => Reason for the Correct Answer:
This is a “Reasoning Beyond the Text” question, which means that it wants you to either apply or extrapolate the ideas in the passage to new situations or to assess how new information would impact the ideas presented in the passage. It is important to understand the assumptions underlying the article, and how new information may or may not shift the central thesis.
Gladstone’s basic thesis is that “Homer and his contemporaries perceived the world in something closer to black and white than to full Technicolor” and that there was “universal color blindness among the ancient Greeks”. If the Iliad and Odyssey were a patchwork composed by a great number of writers, then it would help to show that a group of individuals used a restricted range of colors in their writings rather than just a single individual (Homer) or two (Pindar). This would greatly strengthen Gladstone’s basic thesis because it would suggest that the “oddities in Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey could not have stemmed from any problems particular to Homer” (option A). If a larger group of authors show the same limitations in their reference to color, this would strengthen, not weaken the author’s argument (option B). Because it provides support for the author’s argument, the argument would not require modification, which excludes option C. It does however affect the thesis by strengthening it, which excludes option D.
Thus, option A is correct.
)
[answers] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[each_answer] => A. It would not affect Gladstone’s basic thesis.
)
[1] => Array
(
[each_answer] => B. It would weaken Gladstone’s basic thesis.
)
[2] => Array
(
[each_answer] => C. It would require a modification of Gladstone’s basic thesis.
)
[3] => Array
(
[each_answer] => D. It would not affect Gladstone’s basic thesis.
)
)
)
[2] => Array
(
[quiz_unique_key] => 83407773
[question] => Gladstone would predict which of the following about the children of an interior decorator who easily distinguishes among scarlet, burgundy, and fuchsia?
[value] => Array
(
[answer] => 1
[description] => Reason for the Correct Answer:
This is a “Reasoning Beyond the Text” question, which means that it wants you to either apply or extrapolate the ideas in the passage to new situations or to assess how new information would impact the ideas presented in the passage. It is important to understand the assumptions underlying the article, and how new information may or may not shift the central thesis.
Gladstone suggests that the eye can be trained and that using and manipulating colors helped humankind learn how to appreciate nuances in color. Furthermore, the thesis includes the idea that, “these acquired improvements are then passed on to offspring” (paragraph 5). This statement suggests that the children of an interior decorator would be similarly able to easily distinguish various versions of red (option A). Gladstone doesn’t suggest that this enhanced discrimination means that children would be attracted to objects of a certain color (option B). In addition, there is no suggestion that having a nuanced appreciation for color diminishes the need to mention differences in color (option C). In fact, the opposite is likely true based on Gladstone’s analysis which equates the limited use of color names with the limited perception of colors. Finally, Gladstone suggests improvements that are acquired through training are something that can be passed on to offspring. Children inherit these improvements, mitigating the need for years of practice (option D).
Thus, option A is correct.
)
[answers] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[each_answer] => A. The children would be able to easily distinguish various versions of red.
)
[1] => Array
(
[each_answer] => B. The children would be drawn more to objects in various versions of red than to those of any other color.
)
[2] => Array
(
[each_answer] => C. The children would seldom bother mentioning what are to them obvious differences among various versions of red.
)
[3] => Array
(
[each_answer] => D. The children would need to practice distinguishing among various versions of red for years before achieving proficiency.
)
)
)
[3] => Array
(
[quiz_unique_key] => 4240073053
[question] => Homer’s sky is starry, or broad, or great, or iron, or violet; but it is never blue. How does this affect the opinions expressed in the passage?
I. It supports Gladstone’s claim regarding Homer’s use of color.
II. It extends Gladstone’s claim regarding Homer’s focus on nature.
III. It challenges Gladstone’s claim regarding Homer’s penchant for strange imagery.
[value] => Array
(
[answer] => 1
[description] => Reason for the Correct Answer:
This is a “Reasoning Beyond the Text” question, which means that it wants you to either apply or extrapolate the ideas in the passage to new situations or to assess how new information would impact the ideas presented in the passage. It is important to understand the assumptions underlying the article, and how new information may or may not shift the central thesis.
Gladstone describes Homer’s use of descriptions of color as limited, and notes that it was unlikely that people in Homer’s generation experienced the color blue frequently. The example showing the kinds of words that Homer uses to describe the sky, supports Gladstone’s claim regarding Homer’s limited use of color (statement I). The author does not discuss any claims made by Gladstone about Homer’s focus on nature (statement II). Gladstone suggests that Homer’s similes are rich with “sensible imagery”, not strange imagery (statement III).
Thus, only statement I is correct, corresponding to option A.
)
[answers] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[each_answer] => A. I only
)
[1] => Array
(
[each_answer] => B. II only
)
[2] => Array
(
[each_answer] => C. I and III only
)
[3] => Array
(
[each_answer] => D. II and III only
)
)
)
)
[total_question] => 4
[correct_answers] => Array
(
[559741|1] => A
[559741|2] => A
[559741|3] => A
[559741|4] => A
)
[hide_display_feedback_settings] =>
[hide_solutions] =>
)