Almost five decades after Cornsweet published his classic Visual Perception, his latest book Seeing is a concise gem. Seeing is a tour of the human visual system with Cornsweet as our master guide. Science begins with questions; Seeing asks many fundamental questions and offers the reader experiments and demonstrations that point to both answers and, of course, further questions. Multiple warnings are provided: Looking at the sun can burn your retinas!
This book succeeds in presenting the fundamentals of optics, human vision, color vision, resolution of the human eye, and optical illusions in a style that is easily accessible to high school and college students and to readers without a basic knowledge of optics and visual processes. One test of understanding is the ability to teach the knowledge to others—Seeing not only provides the necessary knowledge to teach others, it, perhaps more importantly, provokes and stimulates deep thinking and questioning about the human visual system and its acquisition of knowledge about the world.
Review by Barry R. Masters, Fellow of AAAS, OSA and SPIE
The opinions expressed in the book review section are those of the reviewer and do not necessarily reflect those of OPN or OSA.