Catching the Light of the World: The Entwined History of Vision and Consciousness

“The light of the mind must flow into and marry with the light of nature to bring forth a world… To see, to hear, to be human requires… our ceaseless participation.”

“For this we go out dark nights, searching for the dimmest stars, for signs of unseen things,” the uncommon-minded astronomer and poet Rebecca Elson wrote in her sublime ode to darkness and light. But even down here on Earth, our search for light unfolds amid unseen things — radiant realities beyond the creaturely limits of our vis...