A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision Review

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A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision Review"A Natural History of Seeing" is not a textbook in optics nor a 'history of science' in the usual sense. Simon Ings is not an ophthalmologist or an academic scientist. He's a writer. But he's also a superbly diligent researcher; the closest comparison would be, I think, to John McPhee, and this densely interesting book reminds me of McPhee's enormous book on the tectonic geology of North America. Ings does report on recent research into the physiology of eyes, human and non-human, but his chief concern is with the semiotics (forgive me that ugly word just once, please) of vision, that is, the role sight plays in intelligence, consciousness, society, history, and evolution. His style is free-ranging, discursive, parenthetical... and highly amusing. Hence the reference to Isaak Walton, though Montaigne might also come to mind. I'd hate to have to use this book as a study trot for an exam, but I haven't read a science-centered essay with such pleasure in a long time.
Although tracing the evolution of the eye - meaning inevitably the human eye - is not Ing's chief purpose, his chapters on evolution will be the most provocative for many readers. Provocative of thought, I hope, rather than emotion. Most readers are aware that the 'perfection' of the eye has been wielded as evidence of "Intelligent Design". How could such a complex organ have evolved by random tiny increments, the argument goes, and what selective advantage would a half-finished eye afford? Darwin himself contributed to this fracas by murmuring in his writings that the evolution of the eye presented him with headaches. But in fact the evolutionary progress of the eye from mere swatches of light-sensitive pigment, to light-sensing skin patches, to various sorts of eyes of diverse capabilities has been fairly well established by now, and offers, if anything, quite strong evidence of the incremental power of biological evolution - conservative, opportunistic, inevitable. What's fascinating in Ing's account is his reversal of the usual question. Instead of asking "how could evolution produce vision?", Ing proposes that we should ask "how has vision affected/effected evolution?" Ing speculates, with plenty of evidence and with appropriate reservations, that vision was one of the prime stimuli for the Cambrian Explosion of animal species, the 'saltation' that produced virtually all of the 'body plans' of the animal kingdom within a few million years. In other words, vision formed "us" before "we" needed eyes.
But Ing ranges farther than a study of origins. He also takes on the subtle balance of vision and self-awareness and the chicken/egg problem of vision or communication. And he doesn't shy away from the age-old philosophical issues of epistemology, that is, of the subjective nature of vision and the dilemma of how we can know that what we see is really what is.
This is a book that requires close reading and concentration. It will exercise your short-term memory, to keep the strands of Ing's discourse woven together. It's the sort of book that gets better the better you require yourself to be as a reader. If you like that level of challenge, it's a wonderful book indeed.A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision Overview
The science, history, philosophy, andmythology of how and why wesee the way we do.
We spend about one-tenth of our waking hourscompletely blind. Only one percent of what wesee is in focus at any one time. There is nodirect fossil evidence for the evolution of theeye. 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 boththe evolution of sight and the evolution of ourunderstanding of sight. It gives us the naturalscience-the physics of light and the biology ofanimals and humans alike-while also addressingLeonardo's theories of perception in paintingand Homer's confused and strangely limitedsense of color. Panoramic in every sense, itreaches back to the first seers (and to ancientbeliefs that vision is the product of mysterious optic rays) and forward to the promise of modernexperiments in making robots that see. 16 pages of color; 90 black-and-white illustrations

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