Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions by Susan R. Barry & Oliver Sacks

Author:Susan R. Barry & Oliver Sacks
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Autobiography, Optometry, Human Anatomy & Physiology, Health & Fitness, Vision, Visual Training, Science & Technology, Ophthalmology, Behavioral Optometry, United States, Life Sciences, Patients, Personal Memoirs, Neurobiologists, Science, Biography & Autobiography, Depth Perception, Optics, Medical, Biography, Strabismus
ISBN: 0465009131
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2009-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

Most surprising to me was that the change in my vision affected the way that I thought. I had always seen and reasoned in a step-by-step manner. I saw with one eye and then the next. When entering a crowded room, I would search for a friend by looking at one face, then another. I didn’t know how to take in the whole room and its occupants in one glance. While lecturing in class, I always spoke about A causing B causing C. Until I watched my children grow up, I had assumed that seeing the details and understanding the big picture were separate processes. Only after I learned the details could I add them up together into the whole. I could not, as the saying goes, see the forest for the trees. But my kids seemed to be able to do both at the same time.

I remember a time when my family was given a tour of an old church’s clock tower, and we came upon the mechanism that moved the clock hands and rang the church bells. Instantly, my son saw how the whole machine worked, the choreography of all of the gears. Similarly, when my daughter plays a sonata on her flute, she quickly grasps the whole piece, how the whole drama unfolds. The individual phrases and themes combine for her into one coherent flow. My son and daughter, when young, could grasp the details and the big picture at the same time. I didn’t know how to do this until midlife, when I learned to see simultaneously with two eyes. Only then was I aware of the whole forest and, within it, the trees.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.