## On Looking ### On Looking  #### Metadata * Author: [[Horowitz, Alexandra]] * Full Title: On Looking * Category: #books #### Highlights * and humbled at the limitations of my ordinary looking. My consolation is that this deficiency of mine is quite human. We see, but we do not see: we use our eyes, but our gaze is glancing, frivolously considering its object. (Location 123) * The consensus is that it is in some way taxing. Gustave Fechner, a nineteenth-century German psychophysicist, claimed he felt a physical sensation when attending: "a strain forward in the eyes," and when listening, "one directed sidewise in the ears." The American father of modern psychology, William James, reported that when attending to a memory, he felt "an actual rolling outwards and upwards of the eyeballs," as though fixing on the striations of neurons in the interior of his head. In researching what people perceived attention to be, (Location 127) * Psychologists call this the selective enhancement of some area of your perceptual field and suppression of other areas. And therein lies my approach to "paying attention" to the block: each of my companions on these walks serves to do the selective-enhancing for us, highlighting the parts of the worldexpectation about what we will seeer' that they see but which we have either learned to ignore or do not even know we can see. (Location 198) * He began introducing me to his enthusiasms gradually. As we left the building, before officially setting out on our walk, I made an offhand comment about the paving stones underfoot in the vestibule to the museum, assuming that asphalt would be less interesting to him than a "pure" rock or stone. He glanced at me from under his cap and grinned. (Location 238) * Today we rarely encounter a public surface completely without words. In New York City, signs identifying shops have migrated from the shop face and door onto awnings, banners, and placards thrust into the line of vision of a passing pedestrian. (Location 455) * Sans-serif Gothic from the late nineteenth century also appears around town, in raised stone letters on the face of a building, for instance. (Location 493) * Shaw's whole perception—his ability to see the art of the letters, and to be moved by the awful or glorious—is evidence of an element of his own psychology. We all have an aesthetic, even emotional reaction to particular scenes or objects we see. Some researchers theorize that we have an innate hunger to pursue visual stimuli that give us pleasure. When we sate that hunger, a flood of the brain's natural opioids is released. What, exactly, gives us pleasure? Things rich with information, packed tight with perceptual pudding that calls forth the knowledge we have and associations we have made with similar experiences in the past. In this way, Shaw's expertise allows him to get a kind of natural high from seeing a beautiful letter. (Location 563) # On Looking  ## Metadata - Author: [[Horowitz, Alexandra]] - Full Title: On Looking - Category: #books ## Highlights - and humbled at the limitations of my ordinary looking. My consolation is that this deficiency of mine is quite human. We see, but we do not see: we use our eyes, but our gaze is glancing, frivolously considering its object. (Location 123) - The consensus is that it is in some way taxing. Gustave Fechner, a nineteenth-century German psychophysicist, claimed he felt a physical sensation when attending: “a strain forward in the eyes,” and when listening, “one directed sidewise in the ears.” The American father of modern psychology, William James, reported that when attending to a memory, he felt “an actual rolling outwards and upwards of the eyeballs,” as though fixing on the striations of neurons in the interior of his head. In researching what people perceived attention to be, (Location 127) - Psychologists call this the selective enhancement of some area of your perceptual field and suppression of other areas. And therein lies my approach to “paying attention” to the block: each of my companions on these walks serves to do the selective-enhancing for us, highlighting the parts of the worldexpectation about what we will seeer’ that they see but which we have either learned to ignore or do not even know we can see. (Location 198) - He began introducing me to his enthusiasms gradually. As we left the building, before officially setting out on our walk, I made an offhand comment about the paving stones underfoot in the vestibule to the museum, assuming that asphalt would be less interesting to him than a “pure” rock or stone. He glanced at me from under his cap and grinned. (Location 238) - Today we rarely encounter a public surface completely without words. In New York City, signs identifying shops have migrated from the shop face and door onto awnings, banners, and placards thrust into the line of vision of a passing pedestrian. (Location 455) - Sans-serif Gothic from the late nineteenth century also appears around town, in raised stone letters on the face of a building, for instance. (Location 493) - Shaw’s whole perception—his ability to see the art of the letters, and to be moved by the awful or glorious—is evidence of an element of his own psychology. We all have an aesthetic, even emotional reaction to particular scenes or objects we see. Some researchers theorize that we have an innate hunger to pursue visual stimuli that give us pleasure. When we sate that hunger, a flood of the brain’s natural opioids is released. What, exactly, gives us pleasure? Things rich with information, packed tight with perceptual pudding that calls forth the knowledge we have and associations we have made with similar experiences in the past. In this way, Shaw’s expertise allows him to get a kind of natural high from seeing a beautiful letter. (Location 563)