When Eyes Lie; Ovals that look like Circles Why some Motorists Misjudged Distance the Section of Psychology, at the British Association meeting held at Cambridge recenty, Dr. R. H. Thouless, of Glasgow, gave his presidential address on "Eye and brain as factors in visual perception."
He opened with the words:—"That we see with Our eyes is known to every one and has been known for a long time.
That we see also with our brain is less generally realized," end the remainder of his address was an amplification of this view, together with an account of some of its practical consequences, states "The Times" of August 20.
The classical theory of vision may be called the transmission theory. It assumed that vision is essentially a sensory affair. The eye is constructed after the fashion of a camera, so that an image of an object falls upon- the retina. This image is in some way quickly transmitted to the brain by the optic nerve, and vision results—the object is seen. Any discrepancies between the sensation as transmitted to the brain.and the finished perception which appears in our experience must, on this theory, be ascribed to higher faculties—what we collective-y call judgment—and must be regarded as based on® past experience. An obvious example is our judgment that a penny is a circular object even when we see it at an angle, so that the retinal image must be an ellipse.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.