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217dismissed them. He offered me only the clich%u00e9 that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and since science separates the observer and the observed, by definition beauty could not be a valid scientific question. I should have been told that my questions were bigger than science could touch.He was right about beauty being in the eye of the beholder, especially when it comes to purple and yellow. Color perception in humans relies on banks of specialized receptor cells, the rods and cones in the retina. The job of the cone cells is to absorb light of different wavelengths and pass it on to the brain%u2019s visual cortex, where it can be interpreted. The visible light spectrum, the rainbow of colors, is broad, so the most effective means of discerning color is not one generalized jack-of-all-trades cone cell, but rather an array of specialists, each perfectly tuned to absorb certain wavelengths. The human eye has three kinds. One type excels at detecting red and associated wavelengths. One is tuned to blue. The other optimally perceives light of two colors: purple and yellow.The human eye is superbly equipped to detect these colors and send a signal pulsing to the brain. This doesn%u2019t explain why I perceive them as beautiful, but it does explain why that combination gets my undivided attention. I asked my artist buddies about the power of purple and gold, and they sent me right to the color wheel: these two are complementary colors, as different in nature as could be. In composing a palette, putting them together makes each more vivid; just a touch of one will bring out the other. In an 1890 treatise on color perception, Goethe, who was both a scientist and a poet, wrote that %u201cthe colors diametrically opposed to each other . . . are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye.%u201d Purple and yellow are a reciprocal pair. Our eyes are so sensitive to these wavelengths that the cones can get oversaturated and the stimulus pours over onto the other cells. A printmaker I know showed me that if you stare for a long time at a block of yellow and then shift your gaze to a white sheet of paper, you will see it, for a moment, as violet. This phenomenon%u2014the colored afterimage%u2014occurs because there is 5 Robin Wall Kimmerer Center for Native Peoples and the EnvironmentKimmerer is the founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. The CNPE%u2019s programs %u201cdraw on the wisdom of both Indigenous and scientific knowledge in support of our shared goals of environmental sustainability.%u201d This 2021 photo captures a conversation at the CNPE%u2019s first Haudenosaunee Forest Forum, which invited Indigenous environmental leaders to share traditional methods of protecting forests.How does the CNPE%u2019s mission connect to Kimmerer%u2019s assertion that %u201cthere aren%u2019t two worlds, there is just this one good green earth%u201d (par. 30)? Which experiences described in this essay might have influenced Kimmerer%u2019s decision to found the CNPE?Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.