A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of VisionWe spend about one-tenth of our waking hours completely blind. Only one percent of what we see is in focus at any one time. There is no direct fossil evidence for the evolution of the eye. In graceful, accessible prose, novelist and science writer Simon Ings sets out to solve these and other mysteries of seeing.A Natural History of Seeing delves into both the evolution of sight and the evolution of our understanding of sight. It gives us the natural science--the physics of light and the biology of animals and humans alike--while also addressing Leonardo's theories of perception in painting and Homer's confused and strangely limited sense of color. Panoramic in every sense, it reaches back to the first seers (and to ancient beliefs that vision is the product of mysterious optic rays) and forward to the promise of modern experiments in making robots that see. |
Contents
The commonwealth of the senses | 14 |
The chemistry of vision | 52 |
How are eyes possible? | 71 |
The adaptable eye | 102 |
Seeing and thinking | 128 |
Theories of vision | 154 |
Nervous matter visually endowed | 181 |
Seeing colours | 211 |
Common terms and phrases
Al-Haythem Al-Kindi animals behaviour blind blood vessels blue blur brain Cajal Cambrian Cambrian explosion camera colour vision colour-blind compound eye cones cornea Dalton dark detect Ekman evolution evolutionary evolved experiment explain eye's eyeball fibres field of view filter fish focus fossil fovea Gehring gene genetic George Wald green Hartline head Helmholtz Hermann von Helmholtz human eye ichthyosaurs idea insects invented Julesz Kepler Kühne layer lens lenses living London look Michael Land Moken movement moving nature nerve cells nervous Nobel objects ommatidia ommatidium ophthalmoscope optic nerve perception photograph photoreceptors Physiology pigment pineal polarised predators primates problem Purkinje receptors refracted retina reveal rhodopsin robots rods saccade seems sense sensitive sight species spectrum spot surface theory things tiny tissue trilobite turned ultraviolet University vertebrate vertebrate eye vision research visual cortex visual ray vitamin Wald wavelengths wrote X-chromosome xerophthalmia yellow