A Review of Berkeley's Theory of Vision: Designed to Show the Unsoundness of that Celebrated Speculation

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J. Ridgway, 1842 - Vision - 239 pages
 

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Page 170 - When he first saw, he was so far from making any judgment about distances, that he thought all objects whatever touched his eyes, (as he expressed it,) as what he felt did his skin...
Page 38 - It is, I think, agreed by all that distance of itself, and immediately, cannot be seen. For distance being a line directed endwise to the eye, it projects only one point in the fund of the eye—which point remains invariably the same, whether the distance be longer or shorter.
Page 219 - Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere.
Page 178 - ... he could form no judgment of their shape, or guess what it was in any object that was pleasing to him. He knew not the shape of any thing, nor any one thing from another, however different in shape or magnitude, but upon being told what things were, whose form he knew before from feeling, he would carefully observe that he might know them again...
Page 219 - ... that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube." I agree with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this problem; and am of opinion that the blind man, at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them; though he could unerringly name them by his touch, and certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt.
Page 48 - It will now be obvious why it is impossible for the artist to give a faithful representation of any near solid object, that is, to produce a painting which shall not be distinguished in the mind from the object itself.
Page 141 - I think, usual in any of our ideas, but those received by sight ; because sight, the most comprehensive of all our senses, conveying to our minds the ideas of light and colours, which are peculiar only to that sense; and also the far different ideas of space, figure, and motion...
Page 167 - When the patient first received the dawn of light, there appeared such an ecstasy in his action, that he, seemed ready to swoon away in the surprise of joy and wonder. The surgeon stood before him with his instruments in his hands. The young man observed him from head to foot ; after which he surveyed himself as carefully, and seemed to compare him to himself; and observing both their hnnds, seemed to think they were exactly alike, except the instruments, which he took for parts of his hands.
Page 77 - THE EXTENSION, FIGURES, AND MOTIONS PERCEIVED BY SIGHT ARE SPECIFICALLY DISTINCT FROM THE IDEAS OF TOUCH CALLED BY THE SAME NAMES, NOR is THERE ANY SUCH THING as ONE IDEA OR KIND OF IDEA COMMON TO BOTH SENSES.
Page 34 - That the proper objects of sight neither exist without the mind, nor are the images of external things, was shown even in that treatise. Though throughout the same, the contrary be supposed true of tangible objects: not that to suppose that vulgar error, was necessary for establishing the notion therein laid down; but because it was beside my purpose to examine and refute it in a discourse concerning vision.

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