“The eye sees only….”

Ongoing research on the eye gives fresh meaning to an idea that runs right through TOK – literally most relevant to sense perception, but metaphorically to confirmation bias (WOK intuition) of all kinds. This 3-minute video on the way the brain anticipates changes in the visual field takes as its opening a quotation from French philosopher Henri Bergson: “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

This quick, clear video raises knowledge questions about our screening of the world, involving selective attention and anticipation even at the most basic biological level of sense perception.  In a TOK class, it could complement well the more recent research into “continuity fields” in vision, on which I blogged a few months ago: “time delay and vision: TOK sense perception and the world.”