To further my research I looked at a book called "Art and visual perception" by Rudolf Arnheim. After the research on how the brain and eye literally are linked I wanted to look at a more psychological and perhaps philosophical view and interpretation of their relationship. I looked at the chapter on movement. It speaks about motion, how the eye interprets motion as being a recognition of change in surroundings and environment and that it requires reaction, "And since the sense of vision has developed as an instrument of survival it is keyed to its task". It talks about the way we instinctively know there is a change in our sight because it is almost tribal, a hunters skill. To survive all your senses need to be sharpened as it is the fittest who succeed. I agree and disagree with this. My grandad was blind and what he lacked in sight he gained in instinct using his hearing and touch. He knew if you were near him and if you were hunting through the fridge as quiet as you can he'd know and bollock you to shut the door. All the senses are related and they grow stronger if one has failed. After writing this it has made me think about what blind people see. I had a discussion with someone about this whether it would be better to be born blind or to go blind when your older and you have at least experienced some of the world. My grandad was born with perfect vision and as he grew older it depleted stating off with glasses and eventually losing his driving license as it got that bad. Eventually he lost his sight completely and grew angry and distressed for years about it, so I have been told. But by the time I came around I never saw him as being less able than anyone else. He could still cook, light is cigarette with a match, feel our faces and heads to know our height and which one we were. And like I said he almost became a super person as he instinctively knew where you were, what you were doing, if you should or shouldn't be doing it. He at least saw the world before his sight went, saw colours, nature, his family, some of his grandchildren. But someone born blind would never know, there are developing experiments to send these messages to the brain. But maybe you can't miss what you never had. My grandad grew angry because he had been given sight until his mid 30's and then it was taken away. Its hard to say which is crueler as I haven't personally experienced any sight problems, but it makes you appreciate what you have.
After reading more from this chapter there was a section that I really liked:
"The percepts and feelings, not only of yesterday but of a second ago, are gone. They survive only to the extent that within us they have left remnants, i.e. memory traces..."
It really stuck in my mind and made sense to me. When we see we forget what we have just seen, it is past, but it is there subconsciously contributing to what you are seeing now and what you are about to see. It sounds confusing but it makes sense, and it only makes the mind and brain seem more brilliant as it processes all this information and turns it into understanding and a functioning coherency of what is happening in the world around us.
"Whatever the nature of these traces in the brain, they certainly persist in spatial simultaneity, influence one another and are modified by new arrivals"
All these traces wok together simultaneously and are ever changing by new information developing the situation and environment. And everything that you once thought changes continuously and is adapted by the new arrivals. "in the brain everything has an address, but no date" everything in their is like a bank of films and photographs, traces of your life and others lives, everything that you have looked at, touched, eaten, smelt lives in there in a big catalogue which you can access to a degree and it constantly changes how you perceive the world and usually without you even realising it.
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