Cross-posted from "Epicurean" by @[email protected] in [email protected]
More seriously though, nowadays when people call themselves Epicurean, they mean just the life philosophy stuff, not the physics stuff :D
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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... aren't eyes formed before sight?
Eyes are highly specialized organs for sight. Chances are that the first form of "sight" in our ancestors was a patch of cells that could vaguely detect the presence and absence of light, which was enough of an advantage for it to be selected for in that population, causing it to slowly get more and more optimized over millions and millions of years until it became an actual eye. For a structure as complex as an eye to pop into existence before any simpler sight-giving predecessor organ would be highly unlikely.
Ah, thanks for the clarity -- I suppose the definition of sight is quite broad from a sensory perspective
Good point, how could sight come before eyes? Maybe I'm missing something
Kind of at the same time. The form of the eye as it exists now is one that has been iterated on, but without the benefit of an eye-like organ it would not have been selected for.
Depends on what you mean. Obviously plants and photosensitive tissues have been sensing light for a long time, millions of years. But hose aren't eyes, and most wouldn't even call that poor sight.
A baby human usually has its eyes closed at birth, and the brain isn't completely formed until 25 years old. It takes at least a few years after birth for all the basic parts to settle in and get developed. So does a baby have sight if it hasn't yet used it's immature eyes? Does it truly process what it "sees" into anything meaningful in the beginning?
If there is a spirit that exists before life, does it "see" and with what?
So, then you're agreeing -- the sensory organ is developed first before the sensor is active
Hmmm, yeah, I suppose broadly (unless souls exists). If a creature evolves like... a dozen photosensitive patches, like a proto-spider, would we say that creature has sight but no eyes? If that's the case, do compound "eyes" actually count?
I guess now I'm just musing on where the fuzzy line is between a bunch of eyelets and eyes (made up of single-celled photreceptors). I think sight is just what eyes do. Something like "insight" comes from a metaphor ("looking" within) and I... don't know if there's a different word for like... what the experience of being a plant and sensing the sun on your leaves would be called?