Apr
15th
Tue
15th
What we know of the world comes to us primarily through vision. Our eyes, however, are sensitive only to that segment of the spectrum located between red and violet; the remaining 95 per cent of all existing light (cosmic, infra-red, ultra-violet, gamma, and X-rays) we cannot see. This means that we only perceive 5 per cent of the ‘real’ world; and that even if we supplement our primitive vision with our equally primitive senses of hearing, smell and touch, we are neither able to know everything nor even realise the extent of our ignorance.
— Howard Shapely - ‘The View from A Distant Star’, 1963.