How Vision Metaphors Exclude the Blind

Writers often equate perfect vision with perfect understanding — they’re wrong

jo livingstone
Jun 27, 2018 · 6 min read
Credit: Eric Wiessner via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0
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Metaphors do not run cleanly through our language. They blur. In this series of essays, we’ve followed stories from the material histories of lenses in order to take apart the idea of “sight” as a metaphor for perception itself. We began by observing that the lens is a…

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The Grind
The Grind
The Grind

About this Collection

The Grind

How do we see around something that we see through? Lenses are everywhere and they are close to our faces. On the suspicion that lenses are hiding something, culture writer and retired academic Jo Livingstone presents untold stories from the history of optical science.

How do we see around something that we see through? Lenses are everywhere and they are close to our faces. On the suspicion that lenses are hiding something, culture writer and retired academic Jo Livingstone presents untold stories from the history of optical science.

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