The Road to Certainty and Back

Annual Review of Vision Science
Gerald Westheimer

Abstract

The author relates his intellectual journey from eye-testing clinician to experimental vision scientist. Starting with the quest for underpinning in physics and physiology of vague clinical propositions and of psychology's acceptance of thresholds as "fuzzy-edged," and a long career pursuing a reductionist agenda in empirical vision science, his journey led to the realization that the full understanding of human vision cannot proceed without factoring in an observer's awareness, with its attendant uncertainty and open-endedness. He finds support in the loss of completeness, finality, and certainty revealed in fundamental twentieth-century formulations of mathematics and physics. Just as biology prospered with the introduction of the emergent, nonreductionist concepts of evolution, vision science has to become comfortable accepting data and receiving guidance from human observers' conscious visual experience.

References

Jan 1, 1977·Vision Research·G Westheimer, S P McKee
Dec 1, 1987·Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics and Image Science·D J Field
Feb 1, 1985·Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics and Image Science·E H Adelson, J R Bergen
Jun 1, 1965·The Journal of Physiology·H B Barlow, W R Levick
Jan 1, 1984·Vision Research·D Y Teller
Aug 1, 1993·Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, Image Science, and Vision·J Liang, G Westheimer
Jan 1, 1953·Journal of Neurophysiology·S W KUFFLER
Sep 1, 1956·Journal of the Optical Society of America·O H SCHADE
Oct 1, 1957·Journal of the Optical Society of America·G WESTHEIMER
Oct 1, 1959·The Journal of Physiology·D H HUBEL, T N WIESEL
Dec 1, 1961·The Journal of Physiology·C RASHBASS, G WESTHEIMER
Jul 20, 1942·The Journal of General Physiology·S HechtM H Pirenne

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Citations

Jul 10, 2019·Annual Review of Vision Science·Jacob NachmiasDavid H Brainard

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