There is a lot of talk about color theory these days, both on a political and biological level. As far as the political is concerned, there has been pressure for political correctness for some time now, which has turned a Negro kiss into a chocolate or foam kiss and is now stirring up texts by the philosopher Immanuel Kant.
There are passages in his giant work that would have to be formulated differently today, for example:
"Humanity in its greatest perfection is the race of whites. The yellow Indians already have a lesser talent. The Negroes are lower, and some of the American peoples are lowest".
Apart from the fact that such quotations do not make racism fade, but on the contrary remind us of it, Kant, who never met people with a different skin color, later changed his view. Kant learned and explicitly confessed: "I am learning to honor people". Kant regarded skin color as "necessarily and inevitably hereditary" and attempted a natural-historical interpretation, but this soon overwhelmed him. He felt that there were many factors of the external world to consider, and he already had enough to do with the internal structures of the spiritual. The only thing that was clear to Kant was that the visible colors helped to distinguish friend from foe, and what has given rise to considerations on the higher levels of life can also be applied to one of the lowest levels, whereby an astonishing discovery has now been made in the color perception of worms. It concerns the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, which lives in a swarm of bacteria, some of which can be dangerous to it. To track them down, evolution has left it without eyes, which might lead to the thought that colors play no role.
But the opposite is the case, as the American magazine Science reports. The bacteria that can harm the worm secrete a blue pigment that C. elegans is able to avoid, and it does this with the help of molecules that act as chemoreceptors. Eyeless worms can therefore perceive colors, which at this level of life serves to protect their own lives. At the human level, color itself serves to protect life. There is a lot to learn. The task is not yet complete. On the contrary, it begins now.
