HOW MAN LEARNED TO SEE.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 118, 28 January 1926, Page 1

HOW MAN LEARNED TO SEE.

RESULT OF FACE! GROWING FLATTER. “ In a larger measure than any other sense, vision is the foundation of man’s intellectual supremacy,” said Professor 1 G. Elliot Smith, F.R.S., who delivered the British Optical Association's Foundation lecture recently at King's College, London. Speaking on “ The Connection of the Eyes and Brain,” Professor Smith pointed out that man’s vision differs in two respects from that of the lower animals. Man and his near relatives attained the ability, first, to appreciate three dimensions which give objects a stereoscopic instead of a flat appearance. It was the flattening of the face and the reduction of the snout that ■ allowed the eyes to come to the front 1 of the head and look forward so that the visual fields over-lapped; and, secondly, to appreciate the texture, colour, and other details of objects seen in a way impossible to other animals. Man’s curiosity developed as his sense of vision became more important He began to handle things and to cultivate the sense of touch and appreciation. Thus he built up an ■empirical knowledge of the world around him. With the acquisition of this new power of learning by experimentation events in the world around acquired a fuller meaning. This enriched all man’s experience, not only that which appealed to the senses of sight and touch, but that which appealed to his hearing also. “In the attempt to interpret the nature of the essential factors that determine his wide extension of man’s understanding of visual experience, and the intellectual powers that such understanding conferred upon him,” said Professor Smith, “we are impressed by the fact that it was the increasing efficiency of the muscles which move the eyes in co-operation one- with the other that made possible these high powers of vision and intellect —the. seeing eye and the unedrstanding ear.”