Page 48 - BOAF Journal 1 2012:2707

Behavioral Optometry BOAF Volume1 Number1 2012
Views -Novel - Stefan Collier
Living in „Small Fields“
(Original English)
Preface
I would like to say something to explain why Living in small fields is a symbolic book, whereas having small visual fields is a human state of non fiction.
For 30 years of my professional life I have studied behavioral and syntonic -optometry. Help- ing people with visual deficits in a classical way is one thing, but to understand why they have this, is another.
All living things, including such diverse organ- isms as bacteria and plants, have a range of senses that allow them to respond to their envi- ronment. Humans, in common with other mam- mals, have five main senses: vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Although these senses generally serve us very well in terms of survival, in some
ways our sensory abilities seem to be limited. We cannot hear or smell as acutely as many animals, or see tiny objects from miles away like birds of prey. However, we do have the advantage of a large brain; when we receive sensory input, this brain lets us analyze the information to an incom- parable degree. The brain is constantly bombarded with sensory information from outside the body. This information arrives through a number of differ- ent channels: the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin. Specialized receptors at these sites respond to various forms of stimulus and relay messages down nerve pathways to the brain. No two people sense the world in the same way. Each brain is different and puts an individual interpretation on everything that is brought to its attention.
We rely on vision for most of our information about the world. Simply by looking at something, we can judge its size and texture, what it would
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This novel, will be published in different editions of the BOAF Family-Journal.