This week’s lecture about receptive fields and the cells of the eye made me understand the profoundness of the quote above. The eye is a master of vision because without the eye, there is no vision. The eye is a slave to vision because the eye does not choose how it sees; it is simply a slave to the anatomical make up of the eye. From class, we learned that the cells and photoreceptors of the eye have a lot to do with how we see things. Starting with the photoreceptors, we primarily have two types: cones and rods. Cones and rods are shaped differently so that their sensitivities to light vary. Rods are more sensitive to light so they are responsible for our ability to see in dimly lit situations. Also, where they are located on the eye is important to what we see as well. Cones are located more around the fovea which is in the center of the eye. The rods are more located in the periphery of the eye. The receptive fields of the ganglion cells are smaller in the center of the eye. The smaller the receptive field, the more acuity in vision. This is why things in the periphery are more blurry than what we stare at, which is what the center of the eye sees. For these reasons, how the eye is structured is how we see things.
When we first read the quote, I interpreted it differently than we did in class. I thought about the eye being a slave to vision because there is no way you can unsee something once you see it. For example, I am terrified of scary movies. Once, I watched a movie where you actually see someone killing another person. This image is forever burned in my memory. I can not “unsee” this image no matter how much I try. This is why I thought the eye is a slave to vision. We are at the mercy of what we see because we cannot unsee it. Then I thought maybe the eye was a slave to vision because of all the illusions that we fall for. We cannot control how we see certain things.
After the lecture, I began to wonder about the eye and vision in the same way that people wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg? Do we see things because of the way our eyes evolved, or did our eyes evolve this way so that we can see things this way? It is one of those things that we can never fully come to an agreement on.
