Abstract
If I may be permitted the luxury of beginning a book by sharing its purpose and contents with the reader, I take that luxury gladly. My topic, strabismus, has fascinated and perplexed me (among many others) for over a quarter of a century. Often in despair of ever understanding anything about the topic, I have put aside inquiry into the many questions patients present when I examine them and have resorted to a mechanical way of thinking about the condition that persists in its worst form as the sterile dogmatism—“if the eyes are in turn them out, and if they are out turn them in.” But my demon will not go away. And so it is that I come to write this book.
The search for truth is in one way very difficult and in another very easy, for it is obvious that no man can master it fully nor miss it wholly, but each adds to our knowledge of nature and from the facts all assembled, there arises a certain grandeur. Aristotle
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Ross WD, ed. Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1924: Vol. 1, Book 2, Chap. 1, B993A3-B24.
R.C Hilbert, by Constance Reed. New York/Heidelberg/Berlin: Springer-Verlag; 1970:1–244. Of the many contributions Hilbery made to mathematics, his 1900 lecture stands out as a masterpiece. Most of us are familiar with Goedel’s theorem which disproved one of Hilbert’s most cherished hypotheses, namely, that mathematics was internally consistent and logical and could be derived from first principles. His questions are still with us today and serve as a fertile source of work for young mathematicians. The lecture itself was printed as “Mathematische Probleme” in Ann Phys Math 1900:44–63, 213–237.
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G.Westheimer In:GLennerstrand, von Noorden GK, ECCampos, eds. Strabismus and Amblyopia. New York: Plenum Press; 1988: Chap. 33, 413–416. Gerald Westheimer is right in carefully separating hypotheses in the physical sciences with their rigor and mathematical formalism as opposed to those in the biological sciences. He is also correct, I believe, in stating that strabismus does not have a theory worthy of the name. But see also in this regard, Crick FW, What Mad Pursuit, New York: Basic Books; 1988: Chap. 10, 108–115, on the limits of biological hypotheses and the inherent variability of all outcomes of biological experiments, even when they are done correctly, as by physicists such as Crick!
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PD Medawar. Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society; 1969. It is useful to read this deeply insightful work in conjunction with Heisenberg’s work cited earlier.
Von Monakaw K . As cited by Pasik P, Pasik T. In: BenderM, ed. Oculomotor System. New York: Hoeber Medical Division, Harper & Row; 1961:63. Von Monakaw’s statement is perhaps more true and has more anatomical bases than when he made it. Such is the function of the intuition of genius.
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Flynn, J.T. (1991). Why Write This Book?. In: Strabismus A Neurodevelopmental Approach. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3058-8_1
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