[hoopadoop]

Less by science, then.

It seems like a particular combination of colours, say a particular red and green, may be a comfortable, obvious, familiar combination right now, in a specific culture - but 100 years ago may have been shocking and outrageous. And, who knows, in 100 hundred years may again be 'less comfortable'.

Goethe, Munsell, Itten, Albers, Kandinsky may have spent a great deal of time putting coloured squares next to each other, but none of them ever conducted anything like an objective scientific study on the 'aesthetic quality' of a palette. Goethe's theory was based heavily on the work of Aristotle. Munsell's views on aesthetics seemed laughably conservative at the time, let alone now. Neither Albers or Kandinsky, ever put foward a 'theory' for evaluating harmonious colours. Albers said that each colour 'goes' equally well with any other colour. Itten & Kandinsky were obsessed by the occult 'meanings' of colours. Certainly they were genius colourists.. but scientists?

[diiq]

Absolutely true. They were all mystics and goofballs. But I'm not justifying the mysticism. I never mentioned 'blond types' and 'black types', I didn't touch on the 'passion' of red, or the 'purity' of white.

I'm talking about the bits that seem to have held up after 100 years. The bits these men found from observation, rather than mysticism. This is, more or less, the method taught to design and art students today. You can see it in paintings from around the world, and going back hundreds of years. Simultaneous contrast exists and is physiological, not cultural. The vibration of complements is build into our visual system, too.

Saying that these people had some bad ideas doesn't make all their ideas wrong. We all have head about Newton's alchemy --- but we praise him for calculus and optics nevertheless. Kepler had his Harmonices Mundi, but we still can call him a scientist; because sometimes he was.

And if someone comes along and makes color theory even more scientific, that would be great! I would be overjoyed, because so much of what's been written about it is absolute bunk. However, at the moment, this is the best answer to the question I can give; and I think it works pretty well when compared to randomness.