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The Sense of Sight

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Human Physiology

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Abstract

The philosopher and physicist J.F. Fries of Jena, one of the few Kantians in the age of Romanticism, in 1818 published a “Handbook of Psychological Anthropology” in which he wrote: “Where the knowledge of Nature is concerned, humans are instructed by their eyes. Vision alone leads us beyond the surface of the earth, out to the stars, and on earth itself this sense provides us with most of our perceptions of things, from the greatest distances and with the greatest ease of comprehension … The seeing person apprehends all the life of nature about him by light and color; the eye is our world sense (Weltsinn).” In this chapter we consider the physiological basis of this “world sense”.

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Authors
  1. O. -J. Grüsser
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  2. U. Grüsser-Cornehls
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Physiologisches Institut der Universität, Röntgenring 9, D-8700, Würzburg, Germany

    Robert F. Schmidt Ph.D. (Professor Dr. med.) (Professor Dr. med.)

  2. Physiologisches Institut der Universität, Saarstraße 21, D-6500, Mainz, Germany

    Gerhrad Thews

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© 1989 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Grüsser, O.J., Grüsser-Cornehls, U. (1989). The Sense of Sight. In: Schmidt, R.F., Thews, G. (eds) Human Physiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73831-9_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73831-9_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-73833-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-73831-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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