"Is Color Real?" is the topic of a faculty panel presentation at 4 p.m. Monday, March 21, in the Recital Hall of the Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts at Coastal Carolina University. The Philosophy and the Sciences series discussion is free and open to the public. It will also be livestreamed at http://livestream.com/coastalcarolinauniversity/events/4957068.

Faculty members presenting will include Steven Bleicher, professor of visual arts; Louis Keiner, associate professor of physics; Megan McIlreavy, associate professor of psychology, and Renée Smith, professor of philosophy.

"Most of us could not imagine life without color," says series coordinator Julinna Oxley. "At the same time, very few of us stop to think what color and color experience are. Is color a real aspect of the world, or is it really just a property of experience?"

Bleicher will explain why color is the most important of all of the elements of art and design. He will illustrate how color affects our product selection and show examples of the ways that artists and designers use color both to convey and arouse emotion in their works.

Keiner will explain the physical processes that allow us to see color. He will follow the path of a light wave as it interacts with an object in the environment and then travels to our eye. He will then explain the interaction of that light wave with the color cones in our eye, and explain how this produces in the brain the sensation of color.

McIlreavy will discuss the origins of human vision and the perception of color from a developmental perspective. She will focus on methodologies for understanding infants' color perception and how (and perhaps why) it changes during the first few months after birth. While newborns are not color blind, they do not see colors well, yet this ability develops rapidly in infancy.

Smith will raise questions about the nature of color that result from the conflict between how we experience the world and how science describes it. The problem of color brings together several areas of philosophy -- metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind -- and leads us to examine the relationship between mind and world. Exploring questions about the nature of color shows how science and philosophy complement each other to enrich our understanding of the world in which we live.

For more information, contact Oxley, associate professor and moderator of the discussion, at 843-349-6548 or joxley@coastal.edu.