The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception 1st Edition

by James J. Gibson (Author)

10 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0898599596

ISBN-10: 0898599598

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This is a book about how we see: the environment around us (its surfaces, their layout, and their colors and textures); where we are in the environment; whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going; what things are good for; how to do things (to thread a needle or drive an automobile); or why things look as they do.

The basic assumption is that vision depends on the eye which is connected to the brain. The author suggests that natural vision depends on the eyes in the head on a body supported by the ground, the brain being only the central organ of a complete visual system. When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides, and go from one vista to another. That is natural vision -- and what this book is about.

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Product details

Paperback: 332 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (September 1, 1986)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0898599598
ISBN-13: 978-0898599596
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
Average Customer Review: 10 customer reviews
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Providing a framework to help researchers think about perception: "The more it changes, the more it is the same thing."

December 9, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

We cannot change it. Why has man changed the shapes and substances of his environment? To change what it affords him. He has made more available what benefits him and less pressing what injures him. In making life easier for himself, of course, he has made life harder for most of the other animals. We all fit into the substructures of the environment in our various ways, for we were all, in fact, formed by them. We were created by the world we live in.

Gibson said that if what we perceived were the entities of physics and mathematics, meaning would have to be imposed on them. But if what we perceived are the entities of environment science, their meaning can be discovered. He has conceived "the theory of affordances". He has described the environment as the surfaces that separate substances from the medium in which the animals live. But he has also described what the environment affords animals, mentioning the terrain, shelters, water, fire, objects, tool, other animals, and human displays. The import question is how do we go from surfaces to affordance? A radical hypothesis implies that the values and meanings of things in the environment can be directly perceived, moreover, it would explain the sense in which values and meaning are external to the perceiver.

The advantage to the theory of perception to be derived from a study of this affordance is apparent at every step. We may in our perception-action coupling space conceive quadratic forms like those of the conics, follow Joachimsthal's equation, in connection with maximization and minimization problem in motor control, and observed that if we adopt the fertile method of investigation introduced by Joachimsthal, an equilibrium equation of locomotion and manipulation arose in connection with the determination of existence of quadratic function.

9 people found this helpful

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November 12, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Pathbreaking approach to studying cognition. The bible of ecological psychology.

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Andrew Biemiller

August 23, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I already reviewed this--very favorably.

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Excellent content, but the pages are falling out

August 30, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I'm a graduate student in vision science and find the content of this book very interesting. My complaint is with the actual, physical book - the pages are barely bound and many are falling out as I read it. I've read parts 1 and 2 of the book and of the 69 pages (138/2) in these sections, 15 have become unbound. The book arrived less than 2 weeks ago, so this is not a wear and tear issue (see photo)

review image

14 people found this helpful

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An Eye-Opener...Get it?

July 24, 2010

Format: Paperback

This is one of the great works in the fields of visual perception and cognitive psychology. J.J. Gibson was originally an important contributor to the cognitive revolution, which famously attacked Behaviorists for ignoring the reality of internal mental processes. He focused on how animal sensory systems compute information from their environments in meaningful ways, such as a use of "optic flow" patterns of motion to track their heading as they move through their terrain, and a perception of objects dependent upon their possible uses ("affordances").

Later in life, however, Gibson grew frustrated with the standard reductionist approach to visual perception. He felt that certain fundamental aspects of animal perception were being overlooked, and that "retina-centered" models of vision would never address them. Inspired by the German Gestalt psychologists, Gibson began to promote a theory of visual processing that stressed what he felt was essential to perception, leaving the details about physiology by the wayside. He framed visual perception, along with all other sensory modalities, as important only to allow animals to act upon and interact with their surroundings. Perception as information for action, rather than as a passive documentation of external events.

For the uninitiated, some of the ideas in this book are way outside of conventional conceptualizations of the world. Let him expound upon his ideas, however, and you'll soon be thinking about your own everyday phenomenological experiences from a fresh and exciting perspective. His writing style is careful and thorough, to the point of sometimes being redundant, but he is nonetheless lucid, accessible, and quite entertaining to read.

Another reviewer described this as being a work of Objectivism. Perhaps that argument could be made, but I don't think Gibson himself would care for such talk. This work is all about ecological validity, and "pure" objective truth has little value in the life of most animals (and only a handful of humans at that). Affordances are in the eye of the beholder, and so an "objective" pencil might be perceived as a writing tool for one animal, nest-making material for another, a stabbing weapon for another, and something for a fourth animal to ignore. But I digress...

If you are interested at all in the philosophy of agency, visual perception, cognitive psychology, ecological or comparative cognitive studies, definitely try this book. If you like it, and you have questions as to how ecologically tuned perception develops (a topic that this book does not cover), I also recommend his wife Eleanor Gibson's book, "An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development." Also accessible, and yet incredibly insightful.

50 people found this helpful

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REALY A MUST-HEVE ITEM FOR VISUAL PROFESSIONALS

January 6, 2007

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

World is not like some think it is..

4 people found this helpful

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I think this book is awesome (10 stars)

December 25, 2015

Format: Paperback

Actually, I think this book is awesome (10 stars), but I'm incredibly disappointed that the publishers of this edition managed to remove the 2nd author from the cover of the book. The co-authors of this work are: James J. Gibson and his wife (PhD Psychologist from Yale, taught/worked at Cornell), Eleanor Gibson. What happened, Psychology Press? How did you lose an author along the way to publication?

8 people found this helpful

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This book is for Objectivists

March 6, 2006

Format: Paperback

I read this book on the recommendation of Dr. Harry Binswanger from the Ayn Rand Institute after attending his lecture on how people can achieve certainty epistemologically (i.e., how to learn and how to be sure that what you learn is real and correct) by first relying on sensory information.

While the subject matter of the book is animals, it makes the case that animals reliably acquire information about their environment through their senses. And since humans are animals too, it follows that humans can place high reliability on the information provided to them by their senses (especially sight).

This scientific research provides a good antidote against those who argue that sensory information is inherently unreliable because our sensory organs are either deficient or incapable of adequately gathering information about reality.

21 people found this helpful

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