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Kai Kupferschmidt: Blue (EBook, 2021, The Experiment) 4 stars

A globe-trotting quest to find blue in the natural world—and to understand our collective obsession …

Seeing looks at how we see colour, especially blue. Starting with the electromagnetic spectrum of visible light, he goes into the fine cells in eyes that let us see colour and why we see colour better than other mammals, but worse than birds and insects. He then shows how other cells in the eye are affected by blue light (even blind people), which is why blue light may set our daily rhythms, hence the movement to reduce blue light at night. A look at colour illusions (like the infamous blue dress image) are given. A brief look at the philosophical question of why we 'see' blue is also given.