Quote Originally Posted by lateralus
Technically silence is the lack of sound, right? So you can't really hear it. Like black is lack of color. So why does it deserve its own name of color?
There's two different categories of colour.

1-Colour in Physics - color is what we see when certain object reflect certain wavelengths of the visible spectrum. A blue object reflects only blue light waves to our eyes, same with any other colour. White, however, reflects all the colors of the spectrum, that's why it's white, and black reflects NO colors from the spectrum, but absorbs all light. That's also why when we wear black clothing in the sun, it gets very warm. The primary colours in this case are Red - Green - Blue, what we use to adjust things like TVs and computer monitors, which emit light. So lateralus is right on this point.

2-Colour in Art - when we draw or paint, it's a different story. We're using pigments to colour things and the rules for seeing them don't change, but the rule for applying them is totally different. Here, the primary colours are Cyan - Magenta - Yellow, and it's by mixing these three colors at varying degrees that we get all the colours. However, white in this case is the total absence of color (go ahead, try to get white paint by mixing cyan, magenta and yellow paint) while black is the presence of every colour at full intensity. So black, in this case, is indeed a colour.

I can't believe I typed all this stoned.