“In a double rainbow, the colors on the secondary bow appear in reverse. (From “Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences,” by Philip Fisher

Never mind that this fact has been observed by human eyes, my own included, from time immemorial; I was somehow completely unaware of it before reading Philip Fisher’s treatise on the moral, aesthetic, and intellectual importance of wonder. Part of his book is about the pleasure of learning things—“fear made the gods, but philosophy begins in wonder,” he writes—and, as the title promises, you really do learn a lot about rainbows. At one point, Fisher quotes Newton (who, as he observes, sounds less like a scientist describing double rainbows than like a god creating them): “their Colors shall lie in a contrary Order to one another, the red of both Bows bordering upon the space … which is between the Bows.” It’s true! Moreover, as Fisher also notes, that space between the two rainbows has a name, Alexander’s band, and appears darker than the rest of the sky…

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