I am fascinated by perception. What I see is not what you see. What you see is probably similar to what I see; but not exactly the same. On top of that, what we see isn’t really seeing, at all.
Light reflects off of the candle; the image is reversed by the lens of our eye; and the light hits the rods and cones–light receptors–of our retina. The electrical impulses caused by the the light image reacting on the rods and cones, travel to our brain via the optic nerve. Our brain then translates the electrical impulses into a ‘virtual image’ that ‘appears’ in our brain. That ‘image’ seems to be similar to what we see on a TV or LCD screen; however we don’t have a screen in our brain.
A particular shade of red may not be the same to me as it is to you. People with red/green color blindness have that which “…is the inability or decreased ability to see color, or perceive color differences, under lighting conditions when color vision is not normally impaired. “Color blind” is a term of art; there is no actual blindness but there is a fault in the development of either or both sets of retinal cones that perceive color in light and transmit that information to the optic nerve.”[wikipedia]
People with Irlen’s Syndrome can only see the ordinary printed page properly through colored light or when colored paper is used. Black letters on a white page send scrambled signals to the brain. With my astigmatism, I can’t see lines clearly unless the lenses of my eyes are corrected by glass lenses worn over my eyes.
Animals seen in an entirely different manner, both structurally–in the nature of their eye construction; and in the wavelengths of light that they see. Many animals see in the ultraviolet and infrared ranges of the color spectrum. [see list] They see things we cannot see without the use of technology–night vision goggles, etc.
To take this a step further– our brains, our eyes are composed of millions of atoms. If one were to enlarge an atom to the size of a football stadium, the nucleus of the atom would be the size of a grain of sand. The electrons orbiting around the stadium would also be the size of a grain of sand. All the rest of the atom would be empty space filled with electromagnetic energy.
Our brains, like the rest of our body, are really composed mostly of empty space [yes, those people actually were correct]. That which we know about our bodies is mostly comprised of electromagnetic energy found in the visible range of the spectrum. The visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is only a small portion of the entire range, which extends from low frequencies used for modern radio communication to gamma radiation at the short-wavelength (high-frequency) end, thereby covering wavelengths from thousands of kilometres down to a fraction of the size of an atom. In principle the spectrum is infinite and continuous. In principle, we are infinite and continuous.
Isn’t this what faith leads us to?
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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 