Comments on: Is the Sky Blue?

By: Road Trip! Huntsville, AL -

Road Trip! Huntsville, AL - — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 11:57:57 +0000

[…] ever since Abe was born, that we avoid telling him that the sky is blue, in an attempt to replicate the experiment this guy did with his daughter. The idea is that we can only tell the sky is blue if we already have a preconceived idea of the […]

By: What Color Is Your Sky? • SHAULA EVANS

What Color Is Your Sky? • SHAULA EVANS — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 07:04:20 +0000

[…] Excerpted from Is the sky blue? by Lisa Wade in Sociological […]

By: Wucash421

Wucash421 — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 13:50:00 +0000

Actually, the sky is not blue – we humans percieve it as blue.

Then there’s the added question wether the sky even exists. Sky is a human contruct like heaven and terrorism.

By: Swift2

Swift2 — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 07:08:00 +0000

A shade of brown.

By: leeson

leeson — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 01:22:00 +0000

Lots of comments, but did anyone even listen to the podcast?

BTW rayleigh scattering isn’t really the point. The sky is actually a violet that is just outside the visible light spectrum, but that’s not really the point either.

By: Luk

Luk — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 03:54:00 +0000

Nice!

By: Mail

Mail — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 03:45:00 +0000

Agreed. And it is overlooked the fact that an adult is altering the “normal” (if ever!) educational pattern of a child, “for the sake of science”. And, that we are taking for rational fact, the assumptions of a weirdo that is capable of miseducating his own child.

By: Anon

Anon — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 08:14:00 +0000

I don’t know that blue is always last to be named. In Japanese, the word 青 (ao) is used as blue in modern Japanese, but use to also encompass shades of green. For green the word 緑 (midori) is now used, but you still see ao used for some terms that we would call green in English (unripened plum would be aoumo not midoriumo, traffic lights have aoshingou, etc). I believe Mandarin has some similar overlap.

By: Avery

Avery — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 03:20:00 +0000

I’d like to recommend a wonderful, short book on the color blue and a philosophy of its associated feelings, On Being Blue by William H. Gass.

By: Hatfield

Hatfield — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 20:22:00 +0000

And that funny runny stuff we see, especially in Greece…oh, it’s called the ocean.

By: Cove

Cove — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 19:31:00 +0000

It isn’t that the sky is void, but that the sky is ubiquitous. When you “point” at the sky, YOU think “sky” because your brain has already predetermined the extent of your point; to ALMA, you might as well be hallucinating, trying to encompass the Entirety of Above on the tip of your finger. With a flower, unless you shove Alma’s face right into it, the human eye doesn’t have the resolution to pick out color gradations, so a single pointed-out bloom can be color-defined; but with the wild yonder (and the wine-dark sea, and the same-river-twice, and the chaos of nyx, and the “invisible” air), the CONCEPT ITSELF is Alma’s problem, since the human eye cannot even see it all at once, much less pick out a particular spot of generality to color-name. It isn’t that the sky isn’t “a thing,” it’s that the question itself is intentionally rigged to trick her and she’s not that stupid–“you or your lying eyes” and so forth.

As for the color blue itself, I would hazard that it’s the one-of-the/last named colors because it is the “safest” color. Blue things generally don’t hurt us, so we don’t worry about spotting and differentiating them. The sky doesn’t fall on our heads. And for those blues that do pose danger–like drowning water–the defining characteristic isn’t their visibility but their tactility: water becomes a problem when it TOUCHES us, not when we SEE it.

By: ThreeOranges

ThreeOranges — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:50:00 +0000

Intriguing, but a thing one dude did with his kid isn’t exactly scientific.

By: Is the Sky Blue? | Unbelievable Faith

Is the Sky Blue? | Unbelievable Faith — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 16:54:13 +0000

[…] Is the Sky Blue? » Sociological Images. […]

By: Conuly

Conuly — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 01:09:00 +0000

Neither fuschia or khaki are generally considered basic color words.

By: What I’ve Been Reading: August 5, 2012 « Refrigerator Rants

What I’ve Been Reading: August 5, 2012 « Refrigerator Rants — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 20:58:33 +0000

[…] the sky was blue? Well, think again! Sociologist Lisa Wade explains that referring to the sky as “blue” might be a cultural construction. In fact, the colours we ascribe to certain objects are dependent on our upbringings. For example, […]