Colour is in the eye of the beholder

Here is my next write-up for the New Indian Express. I talk about the subjectivity of colours and why colours are not the properties of the objects themselves but only exist in our heads.

This leads to an interesting possibility. Does this subjectivity mean that bats (that don’t see) could use these colours for different textures of surfaces they encounter (as Richard Dawkins wondered in one of his books)? Do other animals use these colours as labels for the different temperatures they feel or for the different sounds they hear? I don’t know. But there is a probability that we might never know it. It is with this thought (though not put this way) that I end the article.