Page 88 - Miracle in the Eye

M MIRACLE IN THE EYE

Learning to See
Even though they're equipped with visual organs, newborn babies can-
not see their surroundings clearly. At first, they can only separate between
light and dark. This is why an infant's situation is similar to your moving to
a country where they speak a foreign language. At first, anything you hear
will be completely incomprehensible. But as time passes, slowly you gain an
understanding of these sounds and you get accustomed to associating them
with certain phenomena.
A newborn child learns to see in exactly the same way. The first phase
of this learning is following objects with the eyes. In a matter of days after
birth, the baby can follow a source of bright light with its eyes. A few weeks
later, the eye's lens begins to adjust itself, letting the baby focus on nearby
objects. Soon, after discovering that it can grasp these objects with its hands,
it finds that in order to see objects placed close, all it needs to do is move its
eyes a little. Next comes the ability to gaze up and down in order to see high
and low-placed objects, and three-dimensional vision. The baby also learns
the sizes of objects, letting it compare distances. 33 But this is only the start of
the visual learning process; not until the child's third year will it achieve a
complete visual ability.
In the process just explained, the child effectively teaches itself. But
how can a newborn possibly teach itself how to see, completely on its own?
God, Who created people and their eyes, gives us the answer in His book.
The Qur'an says that humans come out of their mother's womb knowing ab-
solutely nothing; and that sight, hearing and hearts are blessed upon them:
God brought you out of your mothers' wombs knowing nothing at
all, and gave you hearing, sight and hearts so that perhaps you would
show thanks. (Qur'an, 16: 78)

The Role of Light in Seeing
Light is the medium through which the world is carried to human eyes.
However, it has yet to be fully explained, from either a structural or a tech-
nical point of view. This is because light cannot be measured in terms of ei-
ther mass or volume. If we were to pause at this point to cover some of the

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