Why Is The Sky Blue?

When kids ask ‘Why’s the Sky Blue’, adults give them bullshit about the way light refracts through our atmosphere. But that’s not WHY the sky’s blue. That’s how. Right? The mechanics of sky-blueness are interesting and relevant, but they are not WHY the sky is blue.

The sky is blue because:

So, be mindful when your doctor or your pastor or your therapist try to tell you ‘why’ certain things are the way that they are.

Vanishingly few adults have even asked what you’re asking. Fewer still have engaged with a rigorous process of discovery. And of those hallowed souls, few have perceived even a partial truth worth sharing. Yet each of us, when asked, will vomit some kind of an answer. And you’ll move on as though the matter is settled.

Or you won’t.

Of course, if my kid asked me the question, I would find myself concocting some kind of answer.

I’d explain that blue is a color-sense we’ve learned to associate with certain phenomena such as the sky and the ocean, and that we likely did so because there was some adaptive advantage to creating a uniform and distinct backdrop against which to see nearer objects. I’d explain also that light is a word we use to describe the visual aspect of… well, everything; and that this ‘everything’ is in some sense a collection of particles and in another sense a proliferation of waves. We can isolate particular waves, measure their frequency, and then posit a spectrum of frequencies from low to high. Turns out: ‘blue’ light is associated with a particular range of frequencies. How cool! Science is great.

And none of that is ‘why’ the sky is blue.
It’s still how.

You might ask: what the fuck, man? What then is ‘why’? Maybe the kid just wants to know ‘how’, then? Maybe the distinction you’re drawing between those two words is tedious and necessary.

Yeah maybe. I don’t know.