The Judgement of the Eye The Metamorphoses of Geometry - One of the Sources of Visual Perception and Consciousness

The sculptor, Jürgen Weber, whose work is to be found in many parts of the world – from Washington D.C. to Nuremberg – presents his experience of how forms convey contents. He does not ask the usual questions about perception, but rather he is concerned with how the visual world expresses information over and above its mere existence. Is it experience that allows us to differentiate between a dangerous face and one that inspires trust? Is that the reason why we see that buds will soon open, that leaves will unfurl, that trees have had to grow in all weathers or do we have at our disposal categories which we use to pass judgement? The way that our visual environment conveys its information to us is one of the most important questions for our survival. Up till now it has rarely been investigated in a systematic and scientific way. Weber assumes that the visual areas of our brains have geometrical categories at their disposal with which they compare the visual phenomena of our environment. Conclusions are then drawn from the differences to them. This is the basis upon which he also explains our visual memories. He brings together various disciplines ranging from psychiatry, children’s drawings, comparable archaeological finds and works of art, to the observation of nature, his own experiments as an artist and surveys of thousands of his students and has thus developed a new theory of perception which also considerably extends our knowledge about threedimensional sight. There is no doubt that this book represents a unique, timely contribution to the many disciplines that are concerned with the wonder of perception. It might even influence the development of computer science.