Looking Up / The Importance of Sky
By: Wells Lucas Santo
Tags: Sky, Culture, Hci, Psychology, Construction

A few years ago¹, I attended a philosophy talk at NYU on “The Mind” that focused on the topics of consciousness and visual perception. In attendance was the famed philosopher of mind Ned Block, who presented a bit on his work on perceptual precision, specifically regarding links between vision, attention, and consciousness. What is it like to perceive something? How do our bodily systems of vision (the eyes and the visual cortex of the brain) play a role in our ability to perceive? These were the sorts of questions that were raised then, which tie into a lengthy history of philosophy of mind’s preoccupation with how we come to perceive and understand the world around us.

While the first half of this session was presented by Professor Block, the second half of the session brought in the perspective of a neural scientist², one who approached questions of the mind by directly analyzing the mechanisms of the human brain. While philosophy of mind and neural science do not necessarily oppose one another, they attempt to answer different sorts of questions with different methods. Sometimes they overlap³, like when a philosopher of mind uses evidence about how the human brain works to argue about a specific position on materialism (the belief that there is no immaterial phenomenon like a “mind” or “soul” beyond what physically exists). However, neural scientists generally ask questions about how the neurons in our brain and body interact to produce phenomenon such as memory or enjoyment (a bottom-up approach), while philosophers of mind ask grander questions about the mind such as whether one actually exists or what properties constitute intelligence (a top-down approach). Whereas Professor Block’s talk was more philosophical in nature about perception as a concept, the following speaker — whose name I unfortunately do not remember — focused specifically on how the visual cortex of our brains processes visual information. More concretely, how does sensory information received from our eyes get processed by a specific set of neurons in our brain, and what is the result of this processing of information?

I’ll spare you the nitty-gritty details of both of these talks and how they go into concepts such as qualia and the workings of the V1 area of the brain. The thing that particularly stood out to me from this session, which I still think a lot about to this day, came from something the second speaker centered in much of his talk. At the time, he had been thinking about the importance of the sky and how the visual perception of the sky affects our brains. For him, this question stemmed from a trip to Greece, where he visited the Theatre of Dionysus, a famous ancient theatre in Athens on the hill of the Acropolis. What’s important to note about this theatre, unlike many of the theatres we have today, is that it was outdoors. As he stood there marveling at the architectural achievement of the theatre, he noticed the prevalence of the sky in his view and how from the place of the audience, one saw much more of the sky in their view rather than the actual stage itself. He began to wonder why this was, and what importance it served for the Greeks.

Another outdoor hillside theatre in Greece; they had a lot of these. Notice how the sky dominates much of the view, rather than the stage itself.

In Western culture, Greek theatre has been held in the absolute highest of regard, with our concepts of tragedy and comedy, costuming, and narrative arcs finding root in the works of Greek playwrights. But for something so deeply praised, studied, and revered, how come the stages were so tremendously small in comparison to the vastness of the sky that could steal the attention of any viewer? While one could dig deeper into a literary or cultural analysis of the role of the sky as space and/or a character of its own in the Greek plays, the speaker that day decided to pose this as a neural science question — does the perception of the sky in view have an effect on our brains, and if so, what is that effect? Does this help us understand why the Greeks might have constructed their theatres with the sky in view as opposed to having closed-roof, indoor theatres? Why is it that the sky seems to captivate us and steal our attention so?

I don’t recall too many of the details of this talk from years ago (especially since my background isn’t in neural science at all), but from some initial studies at the time, it seemed that when people looked up at the sky, there was some quality about it — perhaps in the vastness of it and how our brains have to process that vastness — that actually contributed to the releasing of dopamine, a chemical in our brain that is central to feelings of enjoyment and pleasure. Other neuroscientists have also theorized that looking up into the sky activates the particular systems in our brains that have been specialized for engaging with the upper visual field, the same systems that are also activated during religious experiences, meditation, dreaming, and creative activity. In our own day-to-day language, when things are “looking up”, it’s idiomatic for something being positive, whereas in the inverse, someone “looking down” has connotations of sadness. (Funny enough, I always think about the Futurama episode where Professor Farnsworth’s back gets bent at a right angle by Bender such that he’s always facing the sky and his personality completely changes to one that’s constantly positive and upbeat — to the rest of the cast’s annoyance — but the moment his back is bent back, he regains his bleak view of the world.)

S3E6 “Bendless Love” of Futurama. All rights reserved by Fox.

This is a great example of the sort of investigation conducted in neural science, because we’re looking for answers in the processes of our brains to give explanation to things that we take for granted, such as the longstanding belief that looking up into the sky can lift one’s mood, even if slightly. I don’t necessarily know of or think that there are too many studies on whether looking at the sky actually does release additional dopamine in our brains, but it’s sure an interesting thought. At least for the professor who gave a speech that day, he seemed to have a theory that because looking up at the sky activated parts of the brain that are also highly correlated with things like creative activity and religious experiences, this is why Greek plays seemed to invoke such euphoria in its viewers and why to this day views of the vastness of the sky seem to continue to captivate and inspire us. The feelings we have of optimism or joy that we get from looking up at the open sky might actually be tied to real, chemical changes in the brain, and it’s not just a folk saying or a gag from an animated TV show. That’s pretty cool to me.