The Eye: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #388

by Michael F. Land

The eye is one of the most remarkable achievements of evolution, and has evolved up to 40 times in different parts of the animal kingdom. In humans, vision is the most important sense, and much of the brain is given over to the processing of visual information.In this Very Short Introduction, Michael Land describes the evolution of vision and the variety of eyes found in both humans and animals. He explores the evolution of colour vision in primates and the workings of the human eye, to consider how that contributes to our visual ability. He explains how we see in three dimensions and the basic principles of visual perception, including our impressive capacity for pattern recognition and the ability of vision to guide action.ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: Science, Biology, Nonfiction

129 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 29, 2014

Reviews

[Seema Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a short book in what may seem like a simple subject, this was a very heavy read. I did enjoy it but I think I will need to read it again in the future to fully grasp some of the information.

[Bruce Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was inspired to read this book because of a chemical safety officer's comment, "Eyes are just protein and water". This is confirmed in the second chapter, where it says biological optical systems use

the rather improbable materials of protein and water.

Rhodopsin is identified as the key molecule for vision, allowing the conversion of light into electrical signals for nervous system use.
Because the author studied the eyes of marine animals, including scallops, shrimps and deep-water crustaceans as well as

visual behaviour in spiders and insects

according to Wikipedia, we get a lot of cross-species comparison. The unlikely winner of the colour-receptivity stakes are mantis shrimps.
Despite its short length the book is dotted with odd facts. Who knew, for example, that sheep can recognize up to fifty other sheep faces?
The author reminds us that

colour is a construct of the brain.

In other words, "reality" is an illusion.
I would have gladly given five stars, but unfortunately, the author begins with a truncated history of eyes which is heavily laden with specialist vocabulary. One wonders how many casual readers picked up the book, looked at the first couple of pages, and gave up. Too bad, they missed out on an informative tour of what a quarter of their brain is up to.

[Tso William · Rating 3 out of 5]

The architecture critic Juhani Pallasmaa rallies against the exclusive use of sight to view buildings. Why not, he asks, uses our sense of touch to feel the buildings? One answer to this question is that our body is biologically predisposed to use our eyes to know the world. As Michael Land reveals in this very short introduction, 27% of the human cortex is devoted to visual function while only 7% to feeling of body surface. Judging with our sight is not a modern invention but an intrinsic part of our body.

This very short introduction is only around 90 pages, excluding the bibliography and index, which is quite unfortunate. A typical book of the VSI series is around 120 pages. Hence, Michael Land explains certain concepts in very terse prose. Certain concepts such as binocular stereopsis or how our eyes view distance are not immediately obvious because we often take them for granted. More than often, the diagrams serve to confuse the readers than to clarify the issues.

However the writer has made interesting comparisons between our eyes and other species' eyes. We have single-chambered eyes while the insects compound eyes. Our nerve is in front of our retina while the octopus' nerve is conveniently placed at the back of the retina. This lets us know why our vision is unique - either uniquely bad (e.g. the inability to view ultra-violet) or uniquely good (e.g. our single-chambered design has much better resolution than the insects's compound eyes).

[Cara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of this was much more interesting than you'd expect a book about the eye to be. Part of it was exactly as interesting as you'd expect a book about the eye to be. Probably more falls into the latter category than the former, which is unfortunate, but there's enough here that I don't regret reading it, at least.

[lixy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, concise, well written and with enough room for a little dry humor, of which this is an example: "an extreme form of color blindness is found in rod monochromats: people who failed to develop cones at all. They have no fovea, no colour vision, and poor resolution. They are, however, very popular with perceptual psychologists."

[Åshild Livsdatter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative and at times surprising and very interesting, but the way the book is written is kind of too technical to me. I don't study anything related to the eye, I was just curious, and it seems here that you need a wee bit of foreknowledge.

[Kayce Basques · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like this book jumped into details without providing a solid foundation of the essence of the eye, optics, or vision in general.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview of the subject, although in 100+ pages it doesn't elaborate much on some important subjects (e.g. color science).

[Bojan Tunguz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our eyes are some of our most precious and prized organs. We receive more information about the world using the sense of vision, than all of the other senses combined. Eye is also a very complex organ, and its complicated structure has fascinated biologists for as long as we have been studying the natural world in a systematic way.

This little book gives a surprisingly detailed glimpse at the nature of eye. It provides the reader with a fairly extensive information about the evolutionary development of the sense of vision, and the variety of eye shapes and mechanisms found in nature. The bulk of the book, unsurprisingly, focuses on mammalian eyes, and human eyes in particular. It covers the nature of vision - how the image is formed in the eye, and the cells and biological mechanisms of vision. It also covers the visual system as a whole, especially how the visual information is processed in the brain. The book also covers the vision defects and impairments, many of which are associated with the aging. I particularly appreciated a brief overview of some of the more advanced technologies that are now helping people with visual impairments see. I wish I could learn more about such topics, and am going to seek out further reading resources that deal with this issue.

The book is overall very informative and written in a very systematic and clear way. however, the prose tends to be a bit cut and dry. This is not the most scintillating popular science book that I have come across, but have nevertheless learned a lot from it. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the eye in a systematic way.

[Vikas Datta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lucid and accessible introduction to the instrument that makes this vital sense possible..