Normal |
Protanopic |
|
IS NOT BELIEVING |
We see
very little of what's there...only fuzzy shadows.
but
We see
more and more as we mature
because we learn
new ways to take those
Second
Glances.
|
Normal |
Protanopic |
| We are not born with our perceptions
complete. We are born with very few perceptions. Color vision
gets wired up in our brains soon after we are born.
Stereopsis—the sense of "depth" we get from the fact that our two eyes
see from a slightly different viewpoint—comes along (usually) at about
age 10-19 weeks.
Our perceptions are not simply genetic; they require input from our environment, too. Stereopsis, for example, requires images from our two eyes, images that are slightly different—if they are too different, as they will be if we are cross-eyed or have lazy-eye, then the stereopsis won't develop. The older we get the more sophisticated our brain becomes in how it processes all that complex and varied "information" that comes to us through our many senses. A child understands much that an infant misses—language, for example, takes a while to reveal it's many subtleties. A human adult "sees" things to which a child is "blind." Children don't see the simple but subtle concepts of science. Furthermore, "color" is more subtle than we might think. It's not that a "red-green colorblind" person can't distingish between red and green. It's simpler than that...and it's subtler than that. Protanopia is merely the absence of one of the three different kinds of light-sensing "cones" in our eye. "Normal" human eyes have three kinds: one is most sensitive to bluish light; one to greenish light; and one to redish light. Protanopia is the absence of the third one, the "red-sensitive" cones. The difference between "normal color" and protanopic color lies abstractly deep in the structure of the eye and the brain. Although the difference is very simple, it's not something we "see" through the perception: we must think it out. We must abstract it. (And in ways that children do not.) Rather than abstract it, we tend to feel that what we
see is exactly what's there. Red is red. Green is green.
Black is black. White is white. We learn that someone (it was
Isaac Newton) discovered that white light is composed of all the other
colors. But odds are that we didn't understand much of what that
really means; we did not see where that great insight might lead.
And indeed has: quantum mechanics arose out of the abstraction that is
the electromagnetic spectrum.
Each of us sees with the perceptions that developed as we matured.
The language that developed (at many months of age to a few years of age),
developed as we communicated with other people around us. To each of us,
words like "red" and "green" and "orange" meant something we see.
Through
our eyes. What a protanopic eye sees is different
from what a "normal" eye sees, but seeing the abstract meaning of that
difference is So how would we ever know there is a difference? It takes a lot of careful observation, a lot of careful experimentation, a lot of careful reasoning, to discover just what the differences are. The reasoning is the key. Just as someone who developed language in a German speaking family can hear the ümlaut loud and clear, but not the stick-your-tongue-out-at-'em "th" sound of English, different people develop different senses of critical reasoning insights. Human insight has a wonderful capability to develop, especially in adulthood, many senses of the abstract relationships that are needed to understand, for example, the wondrous—and somewhat mysterious—mechanisms of human color vision. Perhaps to understand color at the abstract level which is dimensionality....And then to "see" that what we see is only a narrow slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, and to grasp the implications of our color being only a two or three dimensional projection from a wave-length space of infinite dimensions. Our minds can develop "perceptions of the abstract" that let us "see," and effectively respond to, things in the world around us that were not seen in the earlier millennia of "primitive" man. That is science. Science
is not "just an alternative" way of knowing;
|
can see (soon) Todlers
Children
Some
Adults
|
 |
We can develop information processing insights, like stereopsis—and we can learn ways to use our insights to do interesting things, like communicate hidden messages to other people...and enhance our perception.
| Stereopsis is simply one
out of many cues we have
that gives us "depth perception" when we
look at things. A person
who is "stereopsis blind" is not necessarily
"blind" to depth. He, or she,
has about two dozen other depth perceptions.
The way one object hides another object
farther back is a depth perception.
So is the haze that obscures
distant objects. These are the
perceptions that give us a sense of
space and dimensions. Perhaps the most
interesting depth perception is the relative
motions of images in our eyes as we
move. Some birds lack overlapping vision
and use this kind of "motion"
depth perception to see what's above
and what's below among the prey they
fly over. This explanation of
depth is especially interesting because the
same part of our brain that interprets
stereopsis also interprets these relative
motions as depth. At some
point in the processing, motion-depth
and stereopsis-depth become the same thing
in our brains.
Evolution develops many interesting "perceptions" for helping us interact with things in the space about us. Sound is yet another link we have with our environment. Mother Nature has taken this route for the depth perception of some animals. We cannot perceive depth the sonic way a bat or cetacean does; nor can we accurately imagine it. OR TWO |
Stereopsis is
simply one out of many cues we
have that gives us "depth perception" when
we look at things. A person
who is "stereopsis blind" is not necessarily
"blind" to depth. He, or she,
has about two dozen other depth perceptions.
The way one object hides another object
farther back is a depth perception.
So is the haze that obscures
distant objects. These are the
perceptions that give us a sense of
space and dimensions. Perhaps the most interesting
depth perception is the relative motions
of images in our eyes as we
move. Some birds lack overlapping vision
and use this kind of "motion"
depth perception to see what's above
and what's below among the prey they
fly over. This explanation of
depth is especially interesting because the
same part of our brain that interprets
stereopsis also interprets these relative
motions as depth. At some
point in the processing, motion-depth
and stereopsis-depth become the same thing
in our brains.
Evolution develops many interesting "perceptions" for helping us interact with things in the space about us. Sound is yet another link we have with our environment. Mother Nature has taken this route for the depth perception of some animals. We cannot perceive depth the sonic way a bat or cetacean does; nor can we accurately imagine it. OR TWO |
