Perception

by Irvin Rock

Book Overview

In this abundantly illustrated book, the noted psychologist Irvin Rock explores our perception of objects in the world, in art, and in visual illusions. With ingenious experiments devised by himself and other investigators, he explains the amazing riddle of perception: how we manage to turn the ambiguous, everchanging, two-dimensional images that fall on the eye into the rich, constant, three-dimensional world as we see it.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0716750015
• ISBN13: 9780716750017
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: Scientific American Library
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 2.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Many insights into sight , interpretation and comprehension

This is a great work on something rarely considered - how do we perceive the physical world? When you think about it, the very act itself is incredible - almost magical. Cells that were sensitive to light developed, over eons, into the amazing organ we call the "eye". But how does the eye work, or perhaps more important, what are the mental and physical processes that allow us to view reality?The first essay describes comprehension as a process, not a series of unrelated events. He compare comprehension to a melody which is not simply a series of single notes but a sum, a quality. Our consciousness involves much more that merely noting shape, color and size - it involves the way we associate those elements with the human experience. The author discusses many aspects of sight itself - constancy, detecting motion, depth, color, patterns and organization. An excellent essay on art explains how we perceive a 3-D world from a 2-D image. Finally, a chapter on geometric illusion and the point that we perceive what we think we perceive and this may not always be reality.

Enlightening

How much do you know about what you perceive? This book helped answer a lot of my questions about this topic. A must read for people interested in Human Perception.