Height and Light

March 30th, 2008 Fred McVittie Posted in Illusion, Light, Perception, Up |

The common metaphorical association of light with knowledge (in all its forms) seems to show a consistent relationship with the spatial metaphor of knowledge which relates the extent of knowing with height. This consistent pairing of these two metaphors may originate in an embodied experience which routinely links these two concrete experiences.

The light metaphor has been well covered within Arthur Zajonc’s ‘Catching the Light: the entwined history of light and mind’, in which he shows that the historical and cross-cultural application of this metaphor is impressively widespread. As a specific metaphor for the cognitive process of knowing this metaphor has common application within terms such as illumination, enlightenment, flash of insight, and seeing the light. It also features within graphical representations of knowledge acquisition such as lighbulbs, flames, and candles. It should be noted that the sense of knowing signified by light metaphors need not necessarily be the objective knowledge of empiricism; it is very common for light to feature within spiritual and religious epistemologies, and whilst these may not constitute knowledge in the academic sense, they do tend to be experienced as such, albeit Gnostic rather than positivistic.

The use of the vertical dimension as a measure of knowing similarly shows extensive usage across times and cultures, and again this application is not only to the knowledge of science and rationalism, but also to other forms of knowing including the spiritual and religious. Isaac Newton is cited as saying that, if he could see further than other men, it was because he ‘stood on the shoulders of giants’. The elevated position offered by this historical piggy-backing is used to signify greater knowledge (ultimately drawing upon a metaphor linking knowing with seeing), a metaphor widely exploited within ‘hierarchies’ of knowledge, in which higher vertical placement on the hierarchy is seen as suggesting greater knowledge. This verticality is also referred to within terms such as ‘higher power’ or ‘higher self’, in which the power or self which is placed in this higher position is one with superior (sic) access to knowledge and truth.

These two metaphors are both consistent in their application and can be confirmed in their consistency by noting that in both cases the opposite of height and light metaphorically implies the opposite of greater knowledge. There is also a strong consistency between these two metaphors; a source or repository of knowledge which is considered ‘high’ is usually also considered ‘in the light’, whilst one that is considered ‘low’ tends also to be thought of as ‘in the dark’.

It seems extremely likely that the origins of these metaphors, and the reason for their co-presence and coherence, is in the embodied experience of being the types of animal we are with the types of senses we have. To have greater access to information through the occupation of a more elevated position, the top of a tree for example, must be an experience we and our ancestors have had for millions of years, to the extent that such a correspondence must be hard-wired into the fabric of our cognition. Similarly, the fact that the major source of illumination available to us, the Sun, is above us must have structured our consciousness since the earliest dawning of that faculty. There is therefore an overwhelming correlation between height and light which can be verified simply by allowing one’s eyes to rise from the ground to the sky and experience the increase in illumination this rising brings to mind.

The hard-wired nature of this assumed location of light as being ‘up’ is witnessed by the various optical illusions which rely on this phenomenon for their effect. The image below, which appears to show alternative rows of ‘bumps’ and ‘dents’, relies on the unconscious assumption that light comes from above.