🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul22.180659.13623@watson.ibm.com> platt@watson.ibm.com (Daniel E. Platt) writes:
>In article <1992Jul22.154233.21594@linus.mitre.org>, m14494@mwvm.mitre.org (Mike White) writes:
>|> Andrew Mullhaupt writes:
>|> > Why is the sky blue?
>|> 
>|> You'll get lots and lots of answers, and I'll bet my tenure that not one 
>|> of them will address the question "Why?"; they'll all address the question 
>|> "How?".     .....
>
>Let's see... 
>
  [4 good comments deleted]

Also, there is the question of why our eyes are sensitive to this 
particular range of E-M wave frequencies (discussed earlier this 
year in this forum). 

  <philosophical mode on>

>You don't want to get stuck in the position of the little child who asks
>'why' in response to every explanation...  Ultimately, it has to reduce to
>some basis of common experience (agreed standards...).

Right.  The ultimate reason is that "blue" is the name we give to the 
color of the sky in the english language we happen to use to communicate 
this concept.  No one has any idea if what I perceive as "blue" is the 
same as what anyone else perceives as "blue", just that we both agree 
that that thing we perceive is to be called "blue".  

  <philosophical mode off>

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)