Human Vision
Vision is an amazing thing. Our eyes pick up light across that is reflected from our surroundings and this huge amount of information is transmitted to the brain where it gets interpretted in tremendous details to allow us to understand everthing that is in our line of vision.
As we move our eyes across to see other areas around us there is an almost seamless picture of everything in our line of vision at any moment.
What is almost more significant is that our brains can interpret the detail of our field of vision and, as we look around, can merge the signals coming into the eye at almost 200 miles per hour into a seamless huge 3D picture which we can understand and know what our immediate vicinity looks like!
We need the eyeball and the optic nerve to pick up these signals and get them into the brain. Of course we also need the brain to interpret these signals and to allow us (however we define the living 'us') to understand what these signals mean and to allow us to make decisions as to what to do next.
A good example of this is if someone kicked a football at us at a high speed.
Not only does our brain send signals to us, which we then interpret using our brain, saying that a football is heading our way, it allows us to recognise that the trajectory of the ball means that it is going to hit us, and our brain is then able to work out that if we don't duck then we will get hit, and coordinate our body muscles to move our body put of the way of the ball!
Interpreting the trajectory of a moving object and calculating when and where it will hit a solid object, takes a very powerful computer. We are making similar calculations regarding our environment continually thoughout the day!
Can vision really be the product of a random development within us, a change that involves many elements all of which happen by chance at the same moment. And our dna then carries this change to our offspring!
The brain is made up of over 100 billion nerve cells. The brain performs many functions other than thinking.
The central nervous system comprises of the brain and the spinal cord. All sorts of mesages are continually being sent to the brain via the nervous system. The brain is interpreting these signals and responding in various ways. We are unaware of much of this activity and we are not making concious decisions on how to respond to these messages.
Yet we are able understand a lot about our environment and what is happening around us and to us. We are even able to anticipate potential future events and work out what to do next!
The brain is a memory store and can return an answer to a question instantly. A computer needs to sequentually scan data looking for the answer. It might use indexes to cut down the range of the search but it can only find data by following a given computer program designed by a human being!
We continually use our brain to coordinate our vision, our hands and feet in everything we do every minute of each day. Walking, picking something up, catching a ball, watching television, controlling a car, etc are all as a result of our brain working with our vision.
References:
**1 - "What Darwin Didn't know - Geoffrey Simmonds M.D. - ISBN 0-7369-1313-0