Vision

Abstract

AFTER, a period of stagnation, the last twenty years or so have seen a remarkable revival of research into the complex and difficult problems of the fundamental physiology of vision. During this time great advances have been made in our whole conception of the state of adaptation of the eye, in our knowledge of the photochemical and electrical changes which take place in the retina and optic tract in response to stimulation by light, as well as of the correlations between different types of stimulus and the sensations produced. There has lately been an urgent need for a book, possibly on the lines of the “Recent Advances” series, which would make the results of modern research more generally available, and would, perhaps, show how such apparently separated subjects as, for example, the photochemistry of the retina and the study of visual sensation under different conditions can be brought together to build up a coherent picture of our present ideas about the processes whereby light, falling on the eye, produces the complicated visual sensations of which we are conscious.

Vision. A Study of its Basis

S. Howard Bartley; with an Historical Perspective, by Edwin G. Boring. Pp. xv + 350. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1941.) 18s. net.