On Vision and Colors tried to demonstrate physiologically that color is "specially modified activity of the retina." The initial basis for Schopenhauer's color theory comes from Goethe's chapter on physiological colors, which discusses three principal pairs of contrasting colors: red/green, orange/blue, and yellow/violet. This is in contrast to the customary emphasis on Newton's seven colors of the Newtonian spectrum. In accordance with Aristotle, Schopenhauer considered that colors arise by the mixture of shadowy, cloudy darkness with light. With white and black at each extreme of the scale, colors are arranged in a series according to the mathematical ratio between the proportions of light and
Complementary colors by many artists today, the primary colors were considered to be red, yellow, and blue, and the primary–secondary complementary pairs are red–green, blue-orange, and yellow–purple. In the traditional representation, a complementary color pair is made up of a primary color (yellow, blue or red) and a secondary color (green, purple or orange). For example, yellow is a primary color, and painters can make purple by mixing of red and blue; so when yellow and purple paint are mixed, all three primary colors are present. Since paints work by absorbing light, having all three primaries together results in a black or