Eyesight
Eyesight is an obsolete term for the vision . The blindness is still often referred to as loss of sight , respectively.
The compound is early New High German , univerged from the older expression of the (or the ) eyes light . It soon also describes "what shines in the eyes, the eyes" (Grimm, German dictionary ), for example in David Schirmer : "And goodbye, my eyesight!", And later also the eyes themselves, for example Schiller : "O open yourselves , dear eyesight! "
In a well-known epigram, Plotinus expresses the correspondence between light as a physical phenomenon and the sense of sight as a subjective impression, translated by Goethe as: "If the eye were not sun-like / The sun can never see it." Although the eye does not emit any visual rays, it is But the act of visual perception, in particular the recognition of shape and color perception , is not a passive, mechanical reaction to light stimuli, but physiologically and psychologically so complex that, beyond the mere reception process of a sensory organ, the world is more or less actively grasped and understood through the eyesight .
Individual evidence
- ↑ "miner ougen liecht" ("Gaude Maria Virgo"), Altes Passional , 13th century, ed. Hans Georg Richert, Marienlegende aus dem Alten Passional (2016), p. 19. Paul Gerhardt : "Who gave light to the eyes and appearance / skin and shell of the body? " ed.Ebeling, Nuremberg (1683), p. 555 .
- ^ "Consolation in parting", in: Singing roses or songs of love and virtue (1654).
- ↑ The Bride of Messina (1803).
- ↑ Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.9: οὐ γὰρ πώποτε εἶδεν ὀφθαλμὸς ἥλιον, ἡλιοειδὴς μὴ γεγενημένος (paraphrased Plato, Republic , 6.509a). Goethe, Zahme Xenien III (No. 33).
