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Author: Nicholas J. Wade
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2000-01-31
Total Pages: 492
ISBN-13: 9780262731294
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis illustrated survey covers what Nicholas Wade calls the "observational era of vision," beginning with the Greek philosophers and ending with Wheatstone's description of the stereoscope in the late 1830s.
Author: Charles G. Gross
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 1999-07-26
Total Pages: 284
ISBN-13: 9780262571357
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn these engaging tales describing the growth of knowledge about the brain—from the early Egyptians and Greeks to the Dark Ages and the Renaissance to the present time—Gross attempts to answer the question of how the discipline of neuroscience evolved into its modern incarnation through the twists and turns of history. Charles G. Gross is an experimental neuroscientist who specializes in brain mechanisms in vision. He is also fascinated by the history of his field. In these tales describing the growth of knowledge about the brain from the early Egyptians and Greeks to the present time, he attempts to answer the question of how the discipline of neuroscience evolved into its modern incarnation through the twists and turns of history. The first essay tells the story of the visual cortex, from the first written mention of the brain by the Egyptians, to the philosophical and physiological studies by the Greeks, to the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, and finally, to the modern work of Hubel and Wiesel. The second essay focuses on Leonardo da Vinci's beautiful anatomical work on the brain and the eye: was Leonardo drawing the body observed, the body remembered, the body read about, or his own dissections? The third essay derives from the question of whether there can be a solely theoretical biology or biologist; it highlights the work of Emanuel Swedenborg, the eighteenth-century Swedish mystic who was two hundred years ahead of his time. The fourth essay entails a mystery: how did the largely ignored brain structure called the "hippocampus minor" come to be, and why was it so important in the controversies that swirled about Darwin's theories? The final essay describes the discovery of the visual functions of the temporal and parietal lobes. The author traces both developments to nineteenth-century observations of the effect of temporal and parietal lesions in monkeys—observations that were forgotten and subsequently rediscovered.
Author: David Michael Levin
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2008-01-28
Total Pages: 818
ISBN-13: 1134988923
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFirst published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Author: David Michael Kleinberg-Levin
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 516
ISBN-13: 9780262621298
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe fourteen contributors to Sites of Vision explore the hypothesis that the nature of visual perception about which philosophers talk must be explicitly recognized as a discursive construction, indeed a historical construction, in philosophical discourse. In recent years scholars from many disciplines have become interested in the "construction" of the human senses--in how the human environment shapes both how and what we perceive. Taking a very different approach to the question of construction, Sites of Vision turns to language and explores the ways in which the rhetoric of philosophy has formed the nature of vision and how, in turn, the rhetoric of vision has helped to shape philosophical thought. The central role of vision in relation to philosophy is evident in the vocabulary of the discipline--in words such as "speculation," "observation," "insight," and "reflection"; in metaphors such as "mirroring," "perspective," and "point of view"; and in methodological concepts such as "reflective detachment" and "representation." Because the history of vision is so pervasively reflected in the history of philosophy, it is possible for both vision and thought to achieve a greater awareness of their genealogy through the history of philosophy. The fourteen contributors to Sites of Vision explore the hypothesis that the nature of visual perception about which philosophers talk must be explicitly recognized as a discursive construction, indeed a historical construction, in philosophical discourse.
Author: Simon Ings
Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780747592860
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWe spend about one-tenth of our waking hours completely blind - only one percent of what we see is in focus at any one time. You don't need eyes to see - blind volunteers have been taught to see through their chests. Through a spellbinding mix of scientific research, mathematics, philosophy, history, myth, anecdote and language theory, Simon Ings brilliantly unravels the never-ending puzzle of how and why we see in the way that we do. With the help of a beguiling mix of illustrated visual conundrums and enigmas, Ings triumphs with a compelling dissection of the eye's age-old mysteries that is both seriously interesting and interestingly fun.
Author: Martin Jay
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2014-03-14
Total Pages: 686
ISBN-13: 0822378973
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEmpires of Vision brings together pieces by some of the most influential scholars working at the intersection of visual culture studies and the history of European imperialism. The essays and excerpts focus on the paintings, maps, geographical surveys, postcards, photographs, and other media that comprise the visual milieu of colonization, struggles for decolonization, and the lingering effects of empire. Taken together, they demonstrate that an appreciation of the role of visual experience is necessary for understanding the functioning of hegemonic imperial power and the ways that the colonized subjects spoke, and looked, back at their imperial rulers. Empires of Vision also makes a vital point about the complexity of image culture in the modern world: We must comprehend how regimes of visuality emerged globally, not only in the metropole but also in relation to the putative margins of a world that increasingly came to question the very distinction between center and periphery. Contributors. Jordanna Bailkin, Roger Benjamin, Daniela Bleichmar, Zeynep Çelik, David Ciarlo, Natasha Eaton, Simon Gikandi, Serge Gruzinski, James L. Hevia, Martin Jay, Brian Larkin, Olu Oguibe, Ricardo Padrón, Christopher Pinney, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Benjamin Schmidt, Terry Smith, Robert Stam, Eric A. Stein, Nicholas Thomas, Krista A. Thompson
Author: David Michael Levin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2023-05-12
Total Pages: 573
ISBN-13: 100094140X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNietzsche and Heidegger saw in modernity a time endangered by nihilism. Starting out from this interpretation, David Levin links the nihilism raging today in Western society and culture to our concrete historical experience with vision.
Author: Hannah Fairbairn
Publisher: Charles C Thomas Publisher
Published: 2019-07-05
Total Pages: 197
ISBN-13: 0398092826
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book was first projected in 2004, when Author Hannah Fairbairn was teaching interpersonal skills at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts. The experiences of her adult students—and her own experience of sight lost—convinced her that everyone losing vision needs access to good information about the process of adjustment to losing sight and practical ways to use assertive speech. When You Can’t Believe Your Eyes is intended for anyone going through vision loss, their friends, and families. It will inform readers how to get expert professional help, face the trauma of loss, and navigate the world using speech more than sight. Each of the twelve chapters in the book contain many short sections and bullet-point lists, intended to facilitate access to the right information. It begins where you begin—at the doctor’s office or the hospital. Since vision loss takes many forms, there are suggestions for questions you might ask to get a clear diagnosis and the best treatment. Part One also has a description of legal blindness and possible prevention, advice about your job, and tips for life at home. Part Two is about believing in yourself as you deal with the loss, the anger, and the fear before you come up for air and consider training. Parts Three and Four describe using assertive speech and action in all kinds of settings as your independence and confidence increase. Part Five gives detailed information about everything from dating, and caring for babies to senior living, volunteering, and retaining your job. It is hoped that by reading and trying out the suggestions, the reader will recover full confidence, become a positive, assertive communicator, and lead a satisfying life. Because vision loss happens mostly in older years, the book is written with seniors particularly in mind. Professionals will also find it to be a useful resource for their patients.
Author: Stephen E. Palmer
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Published: 1999-04-14
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 0262161834
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book revolutionizes how vision can be taught to undergraduate and graduate students in cognitive science, psychology, and optometry. It is the first comprehensive textbook on vision to reflect the integrated computational approach of modern research scientists. This new interdisciplinary approach, called "vision science," integrates psychological, computational, and neuroscientific perspectives. The book covers all major topics related to vision, from early neural processing of image structure in the retina to high-level visual attention, memory, imagery, and awareness. The presentation throughout is theoretically sophisticated yet requires minimal knowledge of mathematics. There is also an extensive glossary, as well as appendices on psychophysical methods, connectionist modeling, and color technology. The book will serve not only as a comprehensive textbook on vision, but also as a valuable reference for researchers in cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, optometry, and philosophy.
Author: Jonathan Crary
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 1992-02-25
Total Pages: 190
ISBN-13: 9780262531078
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. This analysis of the historical formation of the observer is a compelling account of the prehistory of the society of the spectacle. In Techniques of the Observer Jonathan Crary provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. Inverting conventional approaches, Crary considers the problem of visuality not through the study of art works and images, but by analyzing the historical construction of the observer. He insists that the problems of vision are inseparable from the operation of social power and examines how, beginning in the 1820s, the observer became the site of new discourses and practices that situated vision within the body as a physiological event. Alongside the sudden appearance of physiological optics, Crary points out, theories and models of "subjective vision" were developed that gave the observer a new autonomy and productivity while simultaneously allowing new forms of control and standardization of vision. Crary examines a range of diverse work in philosophy, in the empirical sciences, and in the elements of an emerging mass visual culture. He discusses at length the significance of optical apparatuses such as the stereoscope and of precinematic devices, detailing how they were the product of new physiological knowledge. He also shows how these forms of mass culture, usually labeled as "realist," were in fact based on abstract models of vision, and he suggests that mimetic or perspectival notions of vision and representation were initially abandoned in the first half of the nineteenth century within a variety of powerful institutions and discourses, well before the modernist painting of the 1870s and 1880s.
