PERCEPTION


PREFACE
Irvin Rock

Natural science begins with
and depends upon perception,
but perception itself has not
aroused the universal curiosity
that other subjects of science
have. Scientific exploration
began with things most distant
from us—–the stars—–and only
much later moved inward,
toward man himself. It required
a sophisticated self-
consciousness to appreciate
that perception itself
constitutes one of the greatest
and most difficult scientific
problems of all.

    Even today few people
recognize that the way the
world looks to us is a
remarkable achievement that
calls for explanation. Whereas
many individuals have some
understanding of the
phenomena and concepts of the
natural sciences, with respect
to the field of perception few
have gone beyond the
knowledge that the eye
functions like a camera and
yields a "picture" on the 
retina. Our perception of a
world of objects and events,
however, cannot be explained
adequately by simply referring
to processes within the eye or
to the transmission of
information into the brain
about the retinal image. The
usefulness of the analogy of the
eye to a camera ends with the
formation of that image; the
problem of perception then
begins.