Seeing with the Hands: Blindness, Vision and Touch After Descartes

ISBN-13: 9781474405324 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 224 str.

Mark Paterson

Opis

The "man born blind restored to light" was one of two foundational myths of the Enlightenment, according to Foucault. With ophthalmic surgery in its infancy, the fascination with blindness and what the blind 'see' once their vision is restored remained largely hypothetical. Was being blind, as Descartes once remarked, like 'seeing with the hands'? Did evidence from early ophthalmic surgery resolve debates about the relationship between vision and touch in the newly sighted? Has the standard representation of blind figures in literature been modified by recent autobiographical accounts of blind and vision impaired writers and poets?
As this book shows, much interest in the philosophy and psychology of blindness was prompted by the so-called 'Molyneux Question' which Irish scientist Molyneux asked of English philosopher Locke in 1688. The question concerns 'sensory substitution', the translation between vision and touch, which would effect practical outcomes for the blind, including the development of Braille, the first school for the blind in Paris, and even present day Tactile-Visual Sensory Substitution (TVSS) technologies. Through an unfolding historical, philosophical, and literary narrative that encompasses Locke, Molyneux, and Berkeley in Britain, and Diderot, Voltaire, and Buffon in France, this book explores how the Molyneux Question and its aftermath has influenced attitudes towards blindness by the sighted, and technologies for the blind and vision impaired, to this day.

Spis treści

Preface; Introduction: On questioning blindness and what the blind ‘see’; 1. ‘Seeing with the Hands’: Descartes, blindness, and vision; 2. ‘Suppose a man born blind…’: Cubes and Spheres, Hands and Eyes; 3. Objects that ‘touch’d his eyes’: Surgical experiments in the Recovery of Vision; 4. Voltaire, Buffon, and Blindness in France; 5. The Testimony of Blind Men: Diderot’s Lettre; 6. Reading with the fingers. Tactile signs and the possibilities for a language of touch; 7. Seeing With the Tongue: Sight Through Other Means; 8. Blindness, Empathy, and ‘Feeling Seeing’: Literary Accounts of Blind Experience; References.