Summary
In The Mind's Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, thesense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challange is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world.
Sacks explores some very strange paradoxes--people who can see perfectly well but cannot recognize their own children, and blind people who become hyper-visual or who nagivate by "tongue vision." He also considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery--or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading?
The Mind's Eye is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation. Ant it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to image what it is to see with another person's eyes, or another person's mind.
Sacks explores some very strange paradoxes--people who can see perfectly well but cannot recognize their own children, and blind people who become hyper-visual or who nagivate by "tongue vision." He also considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery--or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading?
The Mind's Eye is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation. Ant it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to image what it is to see with another person's eyes, or another person's mind.
Oliver Sacks, The Mind's Eye (United States by Alfred A. Knopf, 2010). 240 pages
Personal Opinion
Oh terror of terrors, to start losing your ability to see letters and connecting them together into words. Visual anomalies, the stuff of nightmares with names such as alexia, agraphia, agnosia,anomia, prosopognosia (face blindness) etc. May the odds be with you! A reminder of the things we take for granted and we could lose with no warning and so, like they say: count your blessings!
Oliver Sacks delivers another annotated and poignant account of real cases, including his own with a melanoma tumor on his retina, of people faced with these conditions. Another fascinating look at how the brain works and more specifically of how vision is interpreted by the brain. For me, a special new appreciation for life in a three-dimensional world. This is a remarkable testimony not only of the power of adaptability and creativity of the brain, but the different ways people find to cope and thrive despite their circumstances. Oliver Sacks writes his scientific research and explorations of the mind with compassion in his well known flowing prose and captivating style.
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Oliver Sacks delivers another annotated and poignant account of real cases, including his own with a melanoma tumor on his retina, of people faced with these conditions. Another fascinating look at how the brain works and more specifically of how vision is interpreted by the brain. For me, a special new appreciation for life in a three-dimensional world. This is a remarkable testimony not only of the power of adaptability and creativity of the brain, but the different ways people find to cope and thrive despite their circumstances. Oliver Sacks writes his scientific research and explorations of the mind with compassion in his well known flowing prose and captivating style.
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My score (1-5):
About the Author:
Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE (born 9 July 1933), is a British-American neurologist, psychologist, writer, and amateur chemist who is Professor of Neurology at New York University School of Medicine. Between 2007 and 2012, he was professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also held the position of "Columbia Artist". Before that, he spent many years on the clinical faculty of Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He also holds the position of visiting professor at the United Kingdom's University of Warwick.
Sacks is the author of numerous best-selling books, including several collections of case studies of people with neurological disorders. His 1973 book Awakenings was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name in 1990 starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. He and his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain were the subject of "Musical Minds", an episode of the PBS series Nova.
Sacks is the author of numerous best-selling books, including several collections of case studies of people with neurological disorders. His 1973 book Awakenings was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name in 1990 starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. He and his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain were the subject of "Musical Minds", an episode of the PBS series Nova.
Source: Wikipedia