A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780393067194)

We 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.

Author: Simon Ings
ISBN-10: 039306719X
ISBN-13: 9780393067194
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Language: English
Published: 10/17/2008
Pages: 336
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.70w x 1.20d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2008 pg. 794
Booklist 10/15/2008 pg. 10