The Sky: A revisionist examination

[Anonymous No.3144398]

The other day I was lying in the grass with my loved one, looking at the big wide sky-blue sky above me, full of puffy nimbus clouds that look like something made of cotton balls and Elmer's Glue, and with good old Mr. Sun to its side, its warmth mirroring that of our love.

But as I lay there with my lover in my arms, I suddenly realized I had been fooled.

There was no such thing above me. The "sky" does not exist.

[Anonymous No.3144407]

Think about it. What are the properties of this supposed object, "the sky"?

1. It is blue during the day, when the sun moves through it from east to west.
2. During the night it is black, since there is no Sun to allow us to see its blue color. But at these hours, it has millions of stars.
3. Clouds move through it, as do "winds" (another mythical object, but one which I have to time to debunk).
4. A variety of living beings and machines are claimed to "fly" through it: birds, airplanes, balloons, gliders, bats, etc. (But note that not all things that fly do so in the sky; have you ever seen a fly in the sky? I don't believe so.)

What object could meet these criteria? No such thing could exist.

But what about the atmosphere?

My partner almost seemed half worried, half dismissive when I put words to these thoughts. "Oh come on," she said. "The sky is the atmosphere." To which I proceeded to give some serious thought.

[Anonymous No.3144435]

>implying that you exist at all

My imagination can sure be stupid sometimes

[Anonymous No.3144462]

>>3144407
It seemed for a few moments a recomforting thought. There was a sky after all-- it is our atmosphere, that mass of air around our planet, held there by gravitation, which contributes so much to making life on Earth possible, and thus the bliss of having my lover in my arms. And it is true that the sky has many of the above-mentioned properties. The clouds indeed are in the atmosphere, and the above-mentioned living beings and machines fly through it (if what an airplane does can truly be called "flying"; does a submarine "swim"?).

But consideration of the further properties sent a shiver to my spine. Is the Moon in our atmosphere? No. If it were, the gravitational pull between it and the Earth would be such that they would collide into each other, possibly eliminating all life on Earth, and ending this happy moment in the grass and under the Sun along with it.

The thought of having the smallest part of the Sun or any star, much less millions of them, inside our atmosphere, and the horrible fate this would entail for personkind, proved too painful, and I had to seek comfort by hiding my head in the breast of my loved one and her delicious aroma for a few minutes.

[Anonymous No.3144484]

>Not deleting this thread

I seriously hope you don't do this OP

[Anonymous No.3144488]

the fuck is going on in this thread

[Anonymous No.3144503]

Once I regained my composture, I took some courage and decided to examine the rest of the implications of the already discredited enough idea that the sky is the atmosphere:

1. Is the atmosphere blue? Certainly not, I thought. If it were, there would be a blue tint to everything we see.

But this proved to be more problematic. What is "blue", after all? So-called "color" may be biologically-constrained, but is ultimately a cultural construction (http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/cgi-bin/hnews/get/cogsci/12.html).). Saying that the "sky" is "blue" is "true" because of the categories our culture provides us for constructing percepts out of our sensory experience. Other cultures have no such concept as "blue"; thus, it can't be an objective fact about the "sky", or anything for that matter, that it is "blue".
2. Somebody might object about this last point, and bring up the issue of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. My girlfriend, a chemist, did so: "you could actually measure the wavelengths of light in question, and that's an objective fact." No, it isn't, I said. These instruments have to be tuned and adjusted to produce the "right" answers; and the tuning procedure involves using our cultural categories of color. They point the instrument at something blue, and then they adjust a dial until it reads "475 nm". This is circular.

[Anonymous No.3144517]

>>3144503
# Thinking about how some exotic culture removed from ours, say in the mountains in Papua New Guinea, may experience the "sky" and its "color", I decided to ask myself some progressively more hypothetical questions: what if I were aboard the Space Shuttle, looking down at the Earth? Would I be able to see the Earth's "sky"?

Certainly not. But I could indeed see the atmosphere, by all the debris and crap and suspended chemical substances that our "industries" put there. If the atmosphere were the "sky", then I would have been seeing the "sky". But this experience is as far removed from "seeing the sky" as you could ask for.
# Certainly, all of the living beings and machines mentioned above, plus the clouds, are in the atmosphere. But these are not the only objects in our atmosphere. I, with my increasingly distressed lover in my arms, occupy space in the atmosphere. But I am certainly not in the sky (my beloved, impatiently, begins to make noises about my head being firmly in the clouds, but this is merely metaphor, which I ignore).
# Let us retake the case of insects, briefly mentioned above. The fly that my partner idly swats at while we revel in the park is certainly flying, but it is not in the "sky". It's simply not high enough. How far high would be "enough", then? I ask the nearest skyist, my partner, who just gives me a funny look, evidently uncapable of answering my question. How can there be a "sky", if its limits can't be delineated?

[Anonymous No.3144520]

The sky is blue because of the oxygen present in each layer of the earths atmosphere. Also because of the human eye's perception of wavelength.

[Anonymous No.3144550]

>>3144520
Is the "sky" the refracted solar rays in the atmosphere?

A "friend" (who after this incident, I have decided to distance) suggested that the "sky" consists of "refracted sunlight", which gives it its "blue" "color".

This clearly won't do. First of all, then it would mean that there is no sky at nights; no sunlight to refract. Second, it again mentions that faux property, "color", which as we saw above, is highly questionable.

There are bigger problems with this nonsensical identification of the "sky" with "refraction of sun rays". The "sky" is, supposedly, an object or area, occupied by other objects, as discussed near the beginning of this essay. "Refraction of sun rays" is a process, thus a very different sort of entity. Think about it. Would anybody take you seriously if one were to walk up to them, and tell them "Look at that big white cloud in the big refraction of sunlight above us"? No. I tried it with my girlfriend, and she said something about me beginning to freak her out or something; I was too deeply in thought to listen to her.

[Anonymous No.3144564]

the sky is like the horizon: relative to the observer

>>this thread
what the fuck

[Anonymous No.3144576]

"Sky" is just a word. It's what ancient peoples decided to call what was above the earth. It's not a word grounded in scientific definition or philosophical profundity. It's the freakin' sky.

[Anonymous No.3144582]

>>3144576
But why?

It became clearer and clearer; I was dragging around an ages-old myth, intellectual baggage from an age long dead, which our culture has refused to rid itself of.

This was the pressing question. Go out to the closest fashionable mall in full Christmas shopping frenzy, stand in the middle of the crossing of two busy corridors, and look around you. Dozens of people walk around you, all of them, skyists. How could this be, that in this day and age all these people walk around with caveperson ideas? What force makes them all believe in a "sky"?

Who benefits from this widespread belief? Could it be the liberals with their "science", trying to keep the full knowledge of their discipline of "heliocentrism" from us? I really don't know. I will think harder about this, and report my conclusions later on.

Right now, I just wish my girlfriend would return. I wonder why she left in the first place...

[Anonymous No.3144596]

>>3144550

In b4 this nigga flies to the moon at end of the story to look at space

[Anonymous No.3144599]

Rayleigh Scattering

Atoms reflect light, all the time.

The amount of reflection goes up by frequency^4

Higher frequencies scatter way more often

Light from sun has all colors

Light from atmosphere (not in the same direction as the sun) must have been reflected by rayleigh scattering

Blue is highest visible frequency, expect to see lots of blue

Sky is blue

Yay science!

[Anonymous No.3144604]

I think your quest for the definition of the sky is hindered by the fact you think it has to be an object or be limited spatially. Let me try:

"The abyss within the radial limits of the horizon and beyond a distance where perceptual information becomes blurred, as perceived by an observer on a planet's surface"

I think this covers all of your properties neatly. To refine your 4th property, an observer on the ground will say an aeroplane is in the sky, but i don't think someone on the aeroplane will. The definition fits this.

As for the atmosphere - we don't say it's in the sky because we don't directly perceive it on an everyday basis, and a lot of it's based down here near the surface anyway. it may be possible to scientifically prove it's existance there through perception of measurements by instruments (in which case we might say we 'see' it in the sky), but on a day to day basis, it's not necessarily something we'd 'notice'.

There exists a range of electromagnetic radiation from radiowaves to microwaves, and somewhere in between, occupying a relatively tiny range, is what's known as visible radiation. It's called this because this is the range of wavelengths for which our eyes send electical impulses to our brain. It should come as no surprise that the peak power output from the sun also comes in this range (it came first, evolution, etc). The wavelength coming from the sky during the day is objective whether we make an attempt to measure it or not. It has a value, no matter how we define the units. If blue is defined, say for a range of wavelengths, and the wavelength is measured and found to be within the limits, then it is said to be blue. The fact that this range might be called 'blue' is completely arbitrary. It is purely subjective to wonder what blue would look like through someone else's eyes and wonder what sort of emotions the colour might stir up for example. It's still blue (to an indefinately high probability).

[Anonymous No.3144610]

>>3144604
>I think your quest for the definition of the sky is hindered by the fact you think it has to be an object or be limited spatially.
I'm sorry, but a materialistic philosophy such as that embodied by science can't accept any other sort of object as existing.

>"The abyss within the radial limits of the horizon and beyond a distance where perceptual information becomes blurred, as perceived by an observer on a planet's surface"
This doesn't define the sky, it defines a sky; it has to be parametrized by location on planetary surface, by planet, by countless parameters which affect sensory performance (e.g. amount of light, pollution), by culture (perception makes irreducible use of cultural categories, as the example of color shows), by countless physiological variables (the individual characteristics that make my visual system different to everybody else), and who knows what else.
It has as a consequence that when you and I look at "the sky", we're not seeing the same thing, and in fact, it is impossible for that to be the case. Which makes this "sky" it absolutely subjective.

Not to mention that instead of eliminating the existence of a doubtful object, you've multiplied it endlessly.

[Anonymous No.3144613]

where the fucks that nimbus then?

[Anonymous No.3144617]

>>3144604
>There exists a range of electromagnetic radiation from radiowaves to microwaves, and somewhere in between, occupying a relatively tiny range, is what's known as visible radiation.
If you're gonna be patronizing and talk to me as if I'm a poor ignorant guy who doesn't know what electromagnetic radiation is, at least try and get it right. The wavelenght range of visible radiation is not between microwaves and radio waves, it is between microwaves and ultraviolet.

>It's called this because this is the range of wavelengths for which our eyes send electical impulses to our brain. It should come as no surprise that the peak power output from the sun also comes in this range (it came first, evolution, etc).
I think I've made it clear in this other thread that evolution by Natural Selection has not satisfactorily been established.
>>3144434

[Anonymous No.3144620]

>>3144604

I think my brain just farted

[Anonymous No.3144623]

>>3144604
>The wavelength coming from the sky during the day is objective whether we make an attempt to measure it or not. It has a value, no matter how we define the units.
No. The concept of "wavelength" is essentially tied up with measuring it. If we make no attempt at measuring, there is no wavelength, and what wavelengths are depends on the all-too-human concept of measuring.
Anyway, you don't even challenge my point about the circularity of such measures: a ray of blue light is blue supposedly because it is at 475nm, but we know it is at 475nm ultimately because it is blue.
>It is purely subjective to wonder what blue would look like through someone else's eyes and wonder what sort of emotions the colour might stir up for example. It's still blue (to an indefinately high probability).
There are anthropologists and cognitive scientists who have built careers around such "wondering", whose work you dismiss in these lines. Also, I can see past your rhetorical trick, the mention of "emotions", the ideological diametric opposite of "scientific knowledge". Please if you are going to discuss, debate the issues and do not attempt to surreptitiously portrait me as being deluded from the very beginning (and in such a way that reveals you to be deluded by that post-enlightenment monster, the ideology of scientism).

[Anonymous No.3144627]

The sky is what you see when you go outside and look up. Dictionary.com definition: "the upper atmosphere as seen from the earth's surface". The sky manifests itself as an empirical sensory phenomenon: the color you see when you go outside and look up. At night the sky is visible because the atmosphere makes stars twinkle. Contrast this with unicorns, which cetrainly don't exist. Unicorns cannot be seen, touched, ridden, etc. Only pictures of unicorns on airbrushed t-shirts and breathtaking CGI unicorns in that terrific Harry Potter movie and unicorn statues and plays by gay southern writers in which glass unicorns are owned by intoverted young women exist.

There. The sky exists. Have a nice day

[Anonymous No.3144634]

>>3144627
You have stated something using only a dictionary as your evidence. This is a typical tactic of shifting an argument about science or philosophy to an argument about words. Shame on you.

[Anonymous No.3144638]

I'd be willing to bet that your girlfriend left because she couldn't deal with the concept of there being no sky. I'm sure she had to run indoors to feel the security of knowing that there is something above her. Give her a little while to become comfortable with the notion that her protective security blanket doesn't exist and she'll come around. She'll recognize your brilliance and come running back to you. In the mean time, hang in there.

[Grothendieck !Topos4qCwc No.3144656]

Thrilling observation. Indeed our first person conscious experience is entirely subjective, and indeed the sky only has meaning insofar it is a term which is mutually intelligible between communicating individuals.

How truly fortunate that in spite of the total arbitrariness and social construction of our notion of the sky we somehow manage, like blind watchmakers, to stumble carelessly into building airplanes, particle accelerators and satellites.

[sage No.3144722]

>>3144638