Color Theories, Plural

So I did some research on color theory. Or theories, come to find out. And perception of color and other such matters.

Here's the funny thing: it's not very scientific. I mean, they talk all about wavelengths and cone cells and whatever, but it's just guessing half the time. I'm used to thinking of art in scientific terms, because music is rooted in physics. The whole "do-re-mi" business is defined by this thing called the overtone series, which has to do with frequencies and resonance, the interplay of matter and energy. And A is always 440Hz.

Colors have no such luck.

Which is weird, because we know about frequencies of light. We have a pretty good idea of what the average human can see. But there's no standard. Maybe because it wasn't until the advent of color photos (and video) that visual art ever had to be "in concert": that colors had to match. The upshot is that color theory is lagging behind music theory in figuring out just how it all works, and how we perceive it. For instance:

• Human perception of color is believed to favor blues and greens.
• It's generally accepted that humans have three types of "cone" cells in our eyes, these being the cells that perceive color (as opposed to rod cells, which perceive intensity of light, aka they see in black and white).
  
• There's evidence, however, that women (all women? some women? maybe some men too? nobody knows) have four types of cone cells. Which may mean that for some of us, our perception doesn't favor blue and green.
• The popular theory is that those three cone cell types perceive red, blue, or green light, and the three-color monitor display is based on that: the green cones are seeing [x] amount of green, the blue cones are seeing [x] amount of blue, the red cones are seeing [x] amount of red.
  
• However, there's an alternate theory, Oppositional Color Theory, where the cones are reporting whether the light is one kind or another. That is, one kind of cone is judging whether the color is more blue or more yellow, another is judging whether it's more green or more red, etc. Which apparently explains the image-ghost thing, where if you stare at an intense color for awhile, and then turn and look at something white, you can see a vague image of that color's opposite. I wonder if it also explains the blue-green and pink-purple overlap, and how a color can seem to change depending on the colors near it.
• Screen manufacturers are developing TVs and monitors that use four "primary" colors. Your standard screen uses Red, Blue, and Green. These new ones add Yellow. The result: cleaner, brighter colors in the yellow part of the spectrum.
  
• That doesn't help with computer programs, though. They code color as RGB regardless.
• The whole concept of the color spectrum is a mess. Try googling it. No two are alike. I mean, okay, blue colors are on one side, red colors on the other, yellow's in the middle, but the distribution is nuts. Some have huge old blocks of green, some have hardly any, some are totally eaten up with purple, others with red, etc. And I'm sorry, but "indigo" is not a spectral color.
  
• Scientists look down on artists' color wheels, but at least those try to be consistent. What we need is someone who's both an artist and a mathematician, or an artist and a physicist, and see if we can't hammer something out that harmonizes with both.

I also kind of think it would help color theory to have someone who was both a scientist and an interior designer. My sister-in-law is an interior designer, and it's interesting how much of her work is science mixed with color theory and psychology. The placement, number, and type of lights in a room can affect paint colors. Certain colors "bring out" others, or "clash", or are too "busy", or "harmonize." There are hundreds of shades of "off-white" for a reason. In her experience, "yellow is tricky".

Finally, as a follow-up, I was researching color names, and I suspect that Prismacolors get their names from A Dictionary of Color by Maerz & Paul, published back in 1930. It's long out of print and hard to get, unfortunately.