SSW@beBee

Sensational Start to the Week at beBee: SSW@beBee

I have a hive called, “What words mean to me.” I have now added the following feature to this hive; every Monday, I am posting writings related to the word “senses”. This week I offer a discussion based on the sense of sight.

In other words, although they didn’t have the technology to “see” how we see back then, they could still understand through experience how we literally make sense of the world around us.

This is very well reflected in language. Take the expression, “having eyes in the back of our heads”. The dictionary tells us that this expression means: “to seem to be able to sense what is going on behind or outside of one's field of vision or, to know everything that is happening around you.” Interesting that although our eyes are placed in the front of our head, this expression about sensing and knowing with eyes in the back was incorporated into our communication.

One question that arises is, how did it come to be that our eyes are in the front of our head?

“Although light-sensitive cells are likely to have appeared on different parts of early forms of life, selection seems to favor those that enable creatures to detect light in the direction they are headed rather than the direction from which they came. Forward locomotion probably was a driving force for the current location of light-sensitive cells. Besides, with a simple 90-degree pivot of the head and peripheral vision, we already can see behind us without turning our bodies around.”

This enables us to understand more of the function of sight and movement, yet if we look at the neurology, we may be able to “see” how the expression of having eyes at the back of our head contains more truth than perhaps we think.

The part of the brain that we “see” with is at the back of our heads; the location of the occipital lobe.

I hope this opens up our eyes to a new perspective. Let me know how you “see” things.

Image credit: Pesticide Action Network

My Call To Action is my invitation. I invite you to send me a description of what makes sense to you.