Our visual awareness of the location of objects in our surroundings is the result of simple optics followed by complex neurological processes. We fundamentally misunderstand it if we think it somehow begins with our eyes and extends outward to external objects. It does not. It particular, we don’t see through mirrors. With or without mirrors, we detect light that falls on our retinas.
Our corneas and crystalline lenses (aided perhaps by eyeglasses) place focused images of the outside world on our retinas. Photoreceptors and nerve cells, including our brain does the rest. It’s the latter processes that changes retinal images into the perception of an immersive, three-dimensional notion of our surroundings.
Mirrors, ideally, do nothing other than change the direction of propagation of light that falls on them. In particular, plane mirrors redirect light in a manner indistinguishable from what would occur if objects in front or the mirror were an equal distance behind it - what we call a virtual image.
The result is that light comes to our eyes from objects in front of the mirror as it would from from objects behind the mirror if the mirror were absent. But in neither case do we see “outward,” away from our eyes. Light comes to us from distant objects, taking various paths, and our retinas detect it, or see it, there.
Our corneas and crystalline lenses (aided perhaps by eyeglasses) place focused images of the outside world on our retinas. Photoreceptors and nerve cells, including our brain does the rest. It’s the latter processes that changes retinal images into the perception of an immersive, three-dimensional notion of our surroundings.
Mirrors, ideally, do nothing other than change the direction of propagation of light that falls on them. In particular, plane mirrors redirect light in a manner indistinguishable from what would occur if objects in front or the mirror were an equal distance behind it - what we call a virtual image.
The result is that light comes to our eyes from objects in front of the mirror as it would from from objects behind the mirror if the mirror were absent. But in neither case do we see “outward,” away from our eyes. Light comes to us from distant objects, taking various paths, and our retinas detect it, or see it, there.
Our visual awareness of the location of objects in our surroundings is the result of simple optics followed by complex neurological processes. We fundamentally misunderstand it if we think it somehow begins with our eyes and extends outward to external objects. It does not. It particular, we don’t see through mirrors. With or without mirrors, we detect light that falls on our retinas.
Our corneas and crystalline lenses (aided perhaps by eyeglasses) place focused images of the outside world on our retinas. Photoreceptors and nerve cells, including our brain does the rest. It’s the latter processes that changes retinal images into the perception of an immersive, three-dimensional notion of our surroundings.
Mirrors, ideally, do nothing other than change the direction of propagation of light that falls on them. In particular, plane mirrors redirect light in a manner indistinguishable from what would occur if objects in front or the mirror were an equal distance behind it - what we call a virtual image.
The result is that light comes to our eyes from objects in front of the mirror as it would from from objects behind the mirror if the mirror were absent. But in neither case do we see “outward,” away from our eyes. Light comes to us from distant objects, taking various paths, and our retinas detect it, or see it, there.
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