Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design by J. Bourgoin (review)

Books 255 other combinations are equally possible, that innumerable other relationshipsare also present’ (p. 19). This book will be of much value to artists and art teachers, who will find in it a rich source of inspiration. Those interested in the design of 2-dimensional periodic patterns should also read the articles in The Mathematics Teacher (April 1974) and Mathematics Teaching (March 1974) and the article on ground/figure ambiguity by Marianne Teuber in Scientific American (July 1974). The only substantive mistake I found is on page 14: the black and white birds in the ‘Day and Night’ print are not mirror images. The Realms of Colour-Eranos Yearbook, 41-1972. Adolf Portmann and Rudolf Ritsema, eds. E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, 1974. 492 pp. 60 guilders. Reviewed by Ralph Brocklebank* Eleven essays (5 German, 4 English, 2 French) deal with ‘the role of colour in the traditions of the major civilizations ’ and with ‘colour as the carrier of symbolic values, and as an expression of psychic experience’, to quote the preface, which stresses the intellectual orientation of the Yearbook. Gershom Scholem examines Jewish texts, Peter Dronke looks at mediaeval poetry in Western Europe, Henry Corbin describes an Iranian Shi’ite philosophy, Ernst Benz deals with colour in Christian visionary experience and theology, Dominique Zahan gives an account of colour symbolism in parts of Black Africa, Ren6 Huyghe considers colour symbolism and sensitivity in painting and Peter Riedl interprets developments leading up to modem Op art. Schmuel Sambursky shows how Goethe’s colour hypotheses and his antagonism to Newtonian physics can be understood as a late flowering of views that had already appeared in ancient Greek doctrines. He incidentally demonstrates that numerous scientific ideas through the ages depend as much on traditional philosophy as on experimental observations; though he does not seem to appreciate how thoroughly Goethe’s teachings were grounded in direct observation, enough so for him to rank as one of the founders of the science of physiological optics. It is the old problem of the interaction of concept and percept; after all, even abstruse colour symbolism must ultimately be based on visual sense experience. Ancient Greek and Latin authors are also dealt with by Christopher Rowe, who gives one of the best accounts that I have come across of the relationship between direct sense experienceand verbal expression, whether in poetry or in ordinary speech. He explains the riddle of Homeric colour-terminology (first posed by Gladstone) and shows how the changing nature of Greek colour language was not merely a linguistic phenomenon but an! expression of a changing consciousness, of a shift in awareness and thus in response to the visual world. This shift in consciousness reaches an extreme in the Far East, according to Toshihiko Izutsu, who describes the philosophy behind Japanese art: Only those with a fully developed appreciation of the colourfulness of the world can properly understand the elimination of colour in the approach to sheer essence, as expressed in blackand -white ink painting. Finally, Adolf Portmann discusses the biological basis of colour vision and colour experience and suggests that the colourful world of plants and animals is not merely a fortuitous outcome of utilitarian evolution, but a means of ‘self-representation’for organisms. This is a concept that deserves serious consideration, for it could help to explain why it is’that throughout history the experience of colour has given humans a deep feeling that they are sensing something to do with true being and not just superficial appearance. Portman thinks that the scientific approach should not use the intellect to replace the primordial contact with the world that we have, for instance, through our sense of colour, but rather that the aim of our spiritual evolution should be to integrate scientificresults into a rich total vision of the universe. There is a strange quality of timelessness about this book, which contrasts strongly with the sense of historical development that one gets from a study of colour science or representative painting. Perhaps it is because we are no further forward than the ancients in a search for meaning behind outward appearances, or perhaps it is because universal truths are eternally valid, but there...