Is seeing believing?

By Anonymous -
We've all heard the expression "You have to see it to believe it!" When people talk about a particularly shocking or unbelievable experience, they confirm its validity by stating that they "saw it with their own eyes!" We take that to be an ultimate truth.

But is it? Maybe vision is not the absolute end all, be all for truth. Maybe, as Diana Eck puts it, seeing is really just another form of touch. This extends into our lives today; when someone has an object that we are interested in, we ask "Can I see?" and proceed to hold out our hands. I can remember being young and being told that we see with our eyes, not with our hands (as a means of not grabbing and taking things from others). But is that true? And if seeing is another form of communion and communication, is touch another form of seeing?

Professor Nelson's talk made me wonder how much we can actually trust our eyes. Our language puts a great emphasis on sight- think of words like insight, which is essentially a deeper understanding of something or a way to find the truth. But Professor Nelson flipped this idea on its head, explaining that we often can't rely on vision alone to convey the truth. It has a way of tricking us. Take optical illusions as an example- even if they're well known, they still have a way of confusing our eyes and our mind.

Is the picture above moving? Is the picture below an old woman or a young one?


Although seeing might be a form of touch, like Eck would argue, at this point it is easier to say that seeing may not always be valid on its own and can be used in conjunction with touch and the other senses in order to form a truer understanding of our world. In order to survive, which is the evolutionary purpose behind the senses, we need to rely on each of them in turn and together to move about and thrive in our surroundings. 

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