WHERE THE SCIENCE OF VISION WENT ASTRAY !

by Gerald Huth on October 26, 2009

I have often written that “the eye is not a camera”. But I have come upon a more definitive statement in Vision and the Eye by M. H. Pirenne (parapharased from page 120)….“the vertebrate retina….. covers the walls of a camera obscura on which an optical system projects an inverted picture of the outside world”.

This statement represents a deadly shortcut that is the origin of the mistaken view of vision that has been taught for hundreds of years.

The eye is certainly an “optical system” and an “optical image” is certainly the finality, but the steps between differ fundamentally from the camera analogy conjured up in this construction.

The overly simplistic camera analogy implies that the retina is located at the intensity-only sensitive “film” or image plane of the eye. I demonstrate directly using Osterberg’s classical retinal morphology data that this is not the case.

The retina is actually a diffractive surface implying that it is definitively located at the Fourier or focal plane of the eye. This in turn, means that individual light detection elements of the retina, to satisfy the Fourier equation,  must possess the abiity to detect both light internsity and phase of detected light. I have described the light detection structures of the retina that accomplish this.

How long will it take vision science to understand and correct this ?

GCH

Ojai, CA

10.26.09

  • Share/Bookmark

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

Next post: