Oliver Sacks-Anthropologist on Mars(topic cont. below) - Essay Example

however, attempts to portray these people’s perception not as abnormal but merely different, and he hopes that people are able to discover how a different perception could lead people to extreme creativity or intelligence by people that might have been considered mentally deficient. In Sacks’ essay “To See and Not See,” Sacks discusses Virgil, a man who had his vision restored to him after forty-five years. Of a person having their vision restored, Sacks asks the question “Would it be ‘normal’ from the moment vision was restored?” (…). To a person that has never had any difficulty in seeing, the thought of not being able to see does not make sense.

We might close our eyes and wander around vaguely, but this is not how blind people perceive the world. People view reality as normal, what’s just right there in front of their faces. That’s why the people surrounding Virgil were dismayed when he regained his vision but had to attempt to learn how to use his eyes. Sight is, however, something that the brain must construct and interpret. While people with sight might feel as though they are groping around while walking with eyes closed, Virgil felt the same way about walking with his eyes but no cane: “he said that in general he found walking ‘scary’ and ‘confusing’ without touch” (…).

Similarly, Sacks mentions a case from the eighteenth century of a young boy having his vision restored to him that closely resembled Virgil’s experience: “the boy encountered profound difficulties with the simplest visual perception. He had no idea of distance. He had no idea of space or size. And he was bizarrely confused by drawings and paintings by the idea of a two-dimensional representation of reality” (…). Virgil had all sorts of experiences that were disconcerting to him because that did not match up with his the perception of the world he gained through touch.

He was often surprised when he saw people with imperfections in