Perception as a Science

    All scientific inquiry begins
with perceptions. It is through
our perceptions that we arrive
at the facts to be explained,
whether these be the orbits of
planets, the colors of foliage,
the reactions of chemicals, or
the behavior of baboons.

    The study of perception,
however, differs from other
fields of scientific inquiry in
certain crucial respects. In
other fields of science, the goal
is to separate facts from
illusions and to explain the
objective properties or
behaviors of things. The goal of
the science of perception, by
contrast, is to understand the
act of perception itself, to
discover how and why things