Customer Reviews

Perception ("Scientific American" Library)

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This is a great work on something rarely considered - how do we perceive the physical world? When you think about it, the very act itself is incredible - almost magical. Cells that were sensitive to light developed, over eons, into the amazing organ we call the "eye". But how does the eye work, or perhaps more important, what are the mental and physical processes that allow us to view reality?

The first essay describes comprehension as a process, not a series of unrelated events. He compare comprehension to a melody which is not simply a series of single notes but a sum, a quality. Our consciousness involves much more that merely noting shape, color and size - it involves the way we associate those elements with the human experience.

The author discusses many aspects of sight itself - constancy, detecting motion, depth, color, patterns and organization. An excellent essay on art explains how we perceive a 3-D world from a 2-D image. Finally, a chapter on geometric illusion and the point that we perceive what we think we perceive and this may not always be reality.

How much do you know about what you perceive? This book helped answer a lot of my questions about this topic. A must read for people interested in Human Perception.