Light Matter essays

Light Matter essays In order to understand what light is one has to understand how vision works. The process of visual perception is incredibly complex, involving many functions of the brain. In Arthur Zajonc's book "Catching the Light," he writes, "...vision requires far more than a functioning physical organ. Without an inner light, without a formative visual imagination, we are blind." The function of registering visual information, seeing, requires learning to see, in other words, in order to see the light one must posses inner light. The process of visual perception is connected to all the other senses, functions of the body as well as mind. People learn to see by experience. For example: one acquires the knowledge of what any given object is by examining said object from all sides, by holding it, touching it, sometimes even tasting it. One, thus, learns' the object, so that whenever one later sees it, one already knows what it looks like and is able to anticipate the shape and textural qualitie s of objects related to the original. Zajonc writes, "The light of the mind must flow into and marry with the light of nature to bring forth a world." This ability to conceptualize is what makes perception so fascinating. Goethe had written that the inner light, or the 'organ' in the body that makes us consciously perceive, is created by light itself. He wrote, "The eye owes its existence to the light. Out of indifferent animal organs the light produces an organ to correspond to itself; and so the eye is formed by the light for the light so that the inner light might meet the outer." As one becomes older the organ for perception develops more. Our memory is foremost connected to vision; one remembers mostly what one perceived visually, only after that the recollection of other senses and thoughts begins. Our earliest memories come from a period when the conscious visual perception becomes possible. That is why people's earliest m ...

101 Classics to Get You Started

101 Classics to Get You Started So many books, so little time. Anyone, novice or expert, who is interested in reading classic literature might feel overwhelmed by the number of works categorized as Classics. So, where should you get started? The list below contains 101 works spanning multiple countries and subjects. It is meant to be a get started or find something new list for anyone on their own personal classic reading quest. Text Author The Count of Monte Cristo (1845) Alexandre Dumas The Three Musketeers (1844) Alexandre Dumas Black Beauty (1877) Anna Sewell Agnes Grey (1847) Anne Bront The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) Anne Bront The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) Anthony Hope Barchester Towers (1857) Anthony Trollope The Complete Sherlock Holmes (1887-1927) Arthur Conan Doyle Dracula (1897) Bram Stoker The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) Carlo Collodi A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850) Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861) Charles Dickens Hard Times (1854) Charles Dickens Oliver Twist (1837) Charles Dickens Westward Ho! (1855) Charles Kingsley Jane Eyre (1847) Charlotte Bront Villette (1853) Charlotte Bront Sons and Lovers (1913) D.H. Lawrence Robinson Crusoe (1719) Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders (1722) Daniel Defoe Tales of Mystery Imagination (1908) Edgar Allan Poe The Age of Innocence (1920) Edith Wharton Cranford (1853) Elizabeth Gaskell Wuthering Heights (1847) Emily Bront The Secret Garden (1911) Frances Hodgson Burnett Crime and Punishment (1866) Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov (1880) Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) G.K. Chesterton The Phantom Of The Opera (1909-10) Gaston Leroux Middlemarch (1871-72) George Eliot Silas Marner (1861) George Eliot The Mill on the Floss (1860) George Eliot The Diary of a Nobody (1892) George and Weedon Grossmith The Princess and the Goblin (1872) George MacDonald The Time Machine (1895) H.G. Wells Uncle Toms Cabin (1852) Harriet Beecher Stowe Walden (1854) Henry David Thoreau The Aspern Papers (1888) Henry James The Turn of the Screw (1898) Henry James King Solomons Mines (1885) Henry Rider Haggard Moby Dick (1851) Herman Melville The Odyssey (circa 8th C. BC) Homer The Call of the Wild (1903) Jack London Last of the Mohicans (1826) James Fenimore Cooper Emma (1815) Jane Austen Mansfield Park (1814) Jane Austen Persuasion (1817) Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813) Jane Austen Pilgrims Progress (1678) John Bunyan Gullivers Travels (1726) Jonathan Swift Heart of Darkness (1899) Joseph Conrad Lord Jim (1900) Joseph Conrad 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870) Jules Verne Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) Jules Verne The Awakening (1899) Kate Chopin The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) L. Frank Baum Tristram Shandy (1759-1767) Laurence Sterne Anna Karenina (1877) Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869) Leo Tolstoy Alices Adventures in Wonderland (1865) Lewis Carroll Through the Looking-Glass (1871) Lewis Carroll Little Women (1868-69) Louisa May Alcott The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) Mark Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Mark Twain Frankenstein (1818) Mary Shelley Don Quixote of La Mancha (1605 1615) Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Twice-Told Tales (1837) Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850) Nathaniel Hawthorne The Prince (1532) Niccol Machiavelli The Four Million (1906) O. Henry The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) Oscar Wilde The Metamorphoses (circa 8 AD) Ovid Lorna Doone (1869) R. D. Blackmore Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883) Robert Louis Stevenson Kim (1901) Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book (1894) Rudyard Kipling Ivanhoe (1820) Sir Walter Scott Rob Roy (1817) Sir Walter Scott The Red Badge of Courage (1895) Stephen Crane What Katy Did (1872) Susan Coolidge Tess of the dUrbervilles (1891-92) Thomas Hardy The Mayor Of Casterbridge (1886) Thomas Hardy Utopia (1516) Thomas More Rights of Man (1791) Thomas Paine Les Misrables (1862) Victor Hugo The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20) Washington Irving The Moonstone (1868) Wilkie Collins The Woman in White (1859) Wilkie Collins A Midsummer Nights Dream (1600) William Shakespeare As You Like It (1623) William Shakespeare Hamlet (1603) William Shakespeare Henry V (1600) William Shakespeare King Lear (1608) William Shakespeare Othello (1622) William Shakespeare Richard III (1597) William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice (1600) William Shakespeare The Tempest (1623) William Shakespeare Vanity Fair (1848) William Thackeray