A Room for Improvement Episode No 001 the Art of Seeing
 First edition embrace | |
| Author | Aldous Huxley |
|---|---|
| State | U.s. |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Bates method |
| Publisher | Harper & Brothers |
| Publication date | 1942 |
| Media blazon | |
| Pages | 142 |
| ISBN | 0-916870-48-0 |
| OCLC | 644231 |
The Fine art of Seeing: An Adventure in Re-education is a 1942 book by Aldous Huxley, which details his experience with and views on the discredited Bates method, which according to Huxley improved his eyesight.
Huxley'due south own sight [edit]
In the preface to the book, Huxley describes how, at the historic period of sixteen, he had a vehement attack of keratitis punctata which made him nearly completely bullheaded for eighteen months, and left him thereafter with severely dumb sight. He managed to live as a sighted person with the aid of strong spectacles, only reading, in particular, was a great strain.[i] In 1939 his ability to read became increasingly degraded, and he sought the help of Margaret Corbett, who was a teacher of the Bates method. He institute this immensely helpful, and wrote "At the present time, my vision, though very far from normal, is about twice as good equally it used to exist when I wore spectacles, and before I had learned the fine art of seeing".
The volume is non an autobiography, notwithstanding. Although his own history fuelled his interest in vision, and in that location are references in passing throughout the book to his own case, it is written as a general report of the art of seeing as he came to understand it.[ commendation needed ]
His aim in writing [edit]
Huxley writes that his aim in writing the book was
… to correlate the methods of visual education with the findings of modern psychology and critical philosophy. My purpose in making this correlation is to demonstrate the essential reasonableness of a method, which turns out to exist aught more than or less than the practical awarding to the problems of vision of certain theoretical principles, universally accustomed equally true.[1]
Unlike many other texts on the Bates method, Huxley's volume contains no diagrams of the eye, and very trivial description of its physiology.
The supposed incurability of visual defect [edit]
According to Huxley, the prevailing medical view is that
...the organs of vision are incapable of curing themselves … then the eyes must be totally unlike in kind from other parts of the torso. Given favourable weather, all other organs tend to free themselves from their defects. Not then the eyes. … information technology is a waste of fourth dimension fifty-fifty to try to discover a treatment which will assist nature in its normal job of healing. …
He quotes Matthew Luckiesh, Director of Full general Electric'southward Lighting Research Laboratory who wrote:
Suppose that bedridden eyes could be transformed into crippled legs. What a middle-rending parade nosotros would witness on a decorated street! Virtually every other person would go limping past. Many would be on crutches and some on wheel chairs.
Huxley goes on to stress that when legs are imperfect, the medical profession make every effort to become the patient walking again, and without crutches if at all possible. "Why should information technology not be possible to practise something analogous for defective eyes?"
The orthodox theory is, on the face of information technology, so implausible, and then intrinsically unlikely to be true, that one can but be astonished that information technology should exist so more often than not and so unquestioningly accepted. … At the present fourth dimension information technology is rejected only past those who have personal reasons for knowing it to be untrue … Information technology is therefore no longer possible for me to accept the currently orthodox theory, with its hopelessly pessimistic practical consequences.
Sensing+Selecting+Perceiving=Seeing [edit]
He goes on to analyse the whole process of visual perception, using ideas and vocabulary taken from the philosopher C. D. Broad. He sums the analysis upwardly as follows:
-
- Sensing is non the same as seeing.
- The eyes and the nervous organization practise the sensing, the mind does the perceiving.
- The kinesthesia of perceiving is related to the individual's accumulated experiences, in other words, to retentiveness.
- Clear seeing is the product of authentic sensing and correct perceiving.
- Any improvement in the power of perceiving tends to be accompanied past an improvement in the power of sensing and of the product of sensing and perceiving which is seeing.
Variability [edit]
The most characteristic fact most the functioning of the total organism, or any part of the organism, is that it is not abiding, just highly variable. … People with unimpaired eyes and good habits of using them possess, then to speak, a wide margin of visual safe. Even when their seeing organs are operation badly, they yet encounter well enough for most practical purposes. Consequently they are not and so acutely conscious of variations in visual performance as are those with bad seeing habits and impaired eyes. These final have piddling or no margin of safety; consequently whatsoever diminution in seeing power produces noticeable and oftentimes distressing results.
Huxley goes on to discuss the factors which bring about variation – full general wellness or lack of it, tiredness, colorlessness, emotional states. Merely whereas these are in general transitory, glasses, if worn, are to a stock-still prescription.
It volition thus exist seen that the wearing of spectacles confines the eyes to a state of rigid and unvarying structural immobility. In this respect artificial lenses resemble, not the crutches to which Dr. Luckiesh has compared them, just splints, iron braces and plaster casts.
Relaxation [edit]
The majority of the book is devoted to the specific techniques of the Bates method, all designed to bring virtually "relaxation". There is "passive relaxation", a state of complete tranquility, which has its place. But there is also "dynamic relaxation", which is "that state of the trunk and mind which is associated with normal and natural functioning".
Mal-performance and strain tend to appear whenever the witting "I" interferes with instinctively acquired habits of proper apply, either by trying too hard to do well, or past feeling unduly anxious about possible mistakes.. In the building upwards of any psycho-physical skill the witting "I" must give orders, simply not too many orders … Every bit 1 practises the techniques of visual instruction, one discovers the extent to which this aforementioned conscious "I" can interfere with the processes of seeing even when no distressing emotions are present. And it interferes, we find, in exactly the same mode equally it interferes with the process of playing lawn tennis, for example, or singing – past being too broken-hearted to achieve the desired cease. Simply in seeing, as in all other psycho-physical skills, the anxious endeavour to do well defeats its own object; for this anxiety produces psychological and physiological strains, and strain is incompatible with the proper ways for achieving our end, namely normal and natural functioning.
Right at the end of the volume there is a mention of F. M. Alexander, whose Alexander technique for posture is perhaps analogous to that of Bates for eyes.
Criticism of the volume [edit]
The established ophthalmological and optometric professions have not been convinced. For instance, Stewart Duke-Elderberry wrote
Whatever be the value of the exercises, it is quite unintelligent of Huxley to have confused their advocacy with so many misstatements regarding known scientific facts. It has been shown that the hypothesis upon which these methods of handling are based is wrong; but Huxley, while admitting he is ignorant of the matter and unqualified to speak, contends that this is of no importance because the method works in practice and gives good results: it comes into the category of "art" not of "scientific discipline." The argument is perfectly allowable, for in other spheres than medicine empirical methods have often produced effective results the rationale of which may be mysterious. The well-nigh stupid characteristic about his book, however, is that he insists throughout on the physiological mechanism whereby these exercises are supposed to work. It would at to the lowest degree have been logical if he had continued to permit the reader to assume that he was speaking in ignorance of anything except results. . . .
At that place would appear to be no doubt that these exercises take washed Aldous Huxley himself a great deal of expert. Every ophthalmologist knows that they take made quite a number of people with a similar functional affliction happy. And every ophthalmologist as knows that his consulting-room has long been haunted by people whom they take not helped at all.
He concluded by proverb,
For the uncomplicated neurotic who has abundance of time to play with, Huxley'south antics of palming, shifting, flashing, and the rest are probably every bit good treatment as any other system of Yogi or Coué-ism. To these the book may be of value. Information technology is hardly possible that it volition impress anyone endowed with common sense and a critical faculty. It may be dangerous in the hands of the impressionable who happen to suffer from glaucoma or detachment of the retina. . .[2] [3]
Martin Gardner described The Fine art of Seeing as "a book destined to rank beside Bishop Berkeley's famous treatise on the medicinal properties of 'tar-water'"[4]
Philip Pollack commented
Huxley sounds in his book like Bates out of Oxford with a major in psychology and metaphysics. Bates wrote of relaxation but Huxley brings in transcendentalism. Tension and poor vision are caused past the refusal of the private ego to surrender to Nature.[v]
References [edit]
- ^ a b Huxley, Aldous (1942). The Art of Seeing . Harper and Row. ISBN0-916870-48-0.
- ^ Duke-Elder, Stewart; Volume (1943). "The Fine art of Seeing ". British Medical Journal: 365–366. (Reprinted in Arch. Ophth. xxx, 582, 1943.) quoted by Elwin Marg in "Flashes" of articulate vision and negative accommodation with reference to the Bates method of visual training. American Journal of Optometry and Archives of American Academy of Optometry, Monograph no. 128, April 1952
- ^ Duke-Elder, Stewart (22 May 1943). "Aldous Huxley on Vision". British Medical Journal. 1 (4298): 635–636. doi:x.1136/bmj.1.4298.635-a. PMC2282772.
- ^ Gardner, Martin (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Proper noun of Science. Dover Publications. ISBN0-486-20394-viii.
- ^ Pollack, Philip (1956). The Truth virtually Eye Exercises. Philadelphia: Chilton Company.
External links [edit]
- The Art of Seeing at Faded Page (Canada)
sullivanscondlefory.blogspot.com
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Seeing
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