A few weeks ago I found an article on Nature News about a man who was able to navigate through a course of obstacles without falling or hitting himself. Scientists had persuaded the blind man to set his stick aside and walk down a corridor strewn with lab equipment. He was able to do so flawlessly, despite being unable to consciously see any of the obstacles. Head down and hands loose by his side, he twisted his body to slalom slowly but surely between a camera tripod and a swingbin, and neatly stepped around a random series of smaller items. The results of the study are reported in Current Biology. When I watched the TED presentation of Bruno Bowden, I remembered the article again. I have this vague feeling that the two cases have something in common. Their eyes are blind, but not their brain. They rely on their sensomotor abilities that are so powerful that they can compensate for their vision.
Bruno Bowden folds one of Lang’s astonishingly complicated origami figures, blindfolded, in under 2 minutes. He’s accompanied by the cellist Rufus Cappadocia.
In our world we are so used to images, things seem to be made for the eyes only. The eye dominates interpretation of content, it is seen by so many of us as the gate to the world. But is this really true. We should be allowed to ask this question. Is sight an overestimated sense? Blindness I think is obviously something very different compared to what we who are able to see think it is. Isn’t it the sense of touch that makes the world available to us in the first place. Babies know about what I am talking here 😉 …
