A Natural History of Vision

This illustrated survey covers what Nicholas Wade calls the "observational era of vision," beginning with the Greek philosophers and ending with Wheatstone's description of the stereoscope in the late 1830s. This is the first history of vision to present extracts of the works of scholars, organized both topically and chronologically. In what has become the author's signature style, the book juxtaposes verbal and visual descriptions. Many of the more than three hundred illustrations are derived from engravings—of portraits of the scholars cited, as well as of scientific diagrams.

Each portrait appears beside a significant quotation by the scholar and the source of the original illustration. The author's commentary provides the context for the quotations and traces the scientific development within each topic. The book is organized around the principal topics within the investigation of visual phenomena: light, color, subjective visual phenomena (such as afterimages and pattern distortions), motion, binocularity, space, and visual illusions.