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Medical Forum / General / Vision / July 2004For Jan -- The gestalt switch, and the dynamic-eye paradigm
Dear Jan, Subject1: The need to use neutral words to evaluate the natural eye as a dynamic (auto-focused) camera -- and the difficulties of discussing the issue until we agee on exact definitions to describe what we measure. Subject2: That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another. Otis> I simply state that the natural or native eye is a sophisticated auto-focused camera that controls its refractive status to the ACCOMMODATION SIGNAL, and will therefore evince a "stair-case" change if a minus lens is placed on this auto-focused camera. Otis> The order of priorities is to first establish a "paradigm" for the behavior of the natural eye (that can have negative or positive refractive states) before you even begin calling refractive states "errors" or defects. Or in the scientific words of Thomas Kuhn: Equally, it is why, before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all. ******************* The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas S. Kuhn XII. The Resolution of Revolutions [The previous part of this chapter discussed fundamental scientific ideas, their development and the reasons for opposition.] ...These examples point to the third and most fundamental aspect of the in-commensurability of competing paradigms. In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motions again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved, matrix of space. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction. Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please. Both are looking at the world, an the world they look at has not changed. But in some areas the see different things, and they see them in different relations to one to the others. That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another. Equally, it is why, before they can hope to communicate fully, one group or the other must experience the conversion that we have been calling a paradigm shift. Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all. How, then, are scientists brought to make this transposition? Part of the answer it that they often are not. Copernicanism mad few converts for almost a century after Copernicus' death. Newton's work was not generally accepted, particularly on the Continent, for more than half a century after the Principia appeared. Priestly never accepted the oxygen theory, nor Lord Kelvin the electromagnetic theory, and so on. The difficulties of conversion have often noted by the scientists themselves. Darwin in a particularly perceptive passage at the end of his Origin of Species, wrote: "Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume..., I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. ...But I look with confidence to the future, -- to the young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality." And Max Planck, surveying his own career in his Scientific Autobiography, sadly remarked that "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing it opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." ___________________ Subject: Can we reach an agreement? Jan> Otis, may I ask...... Jan> This concerns ONE eye of an adult for simplicity reasons.. Jan> Can we agree such a sophisticated auto-focused camera has a certain focal length when the lens is adjusted for infinite? Jan> Can we agree such a focal length has an according power in diopters? Jan> Can we agree putting a minus lens in front is causing a change in the total refracting power of the unit cameralens + minuslens? Jan> Can we agree the total power of this system (cameralens+minuslens) is lesser plus? Jan> Can we agree the cameralens has to be moved further from the receiving (film) plane in this situation ore has to become more plus when wanting a sharp image? Jan> Can we agree this more pluspower can be controlled by a sophisticated system and the addition should stop at the moment the control mechanism says "sharp" ? Jan> Can we agree taking away the minus-lens causes the sophisticated control mechanism to "look" in which direction the sharp image disappeared, forwards or backwards and go back to the correct focal distance? Jan> Then please recognize a "negative feedback mechanism" in both the eye and the camera, NOT the positive one you wanted people here to believe. Jan> Jan (normally Dutch spoken) Otis, you are famous for walking out if questions are to difficult or not possible to be answered by you. You then changes the "gestalt" and flee from giving answers and start a new thread as you did now by making a question out of a question (in an other thread) addressed to you. It seems clear to me that you have no direct answers on direct questions as shown at the bottom of this misty message. Jan (normally Dutch spoken) > Dear Jan, > [quoted text clipped - 144 lines] > > Jan> Jan (normally Dutch spoken) Dear Jan, If you wish an optical analysis -- rather than presenting it here -- why not read a SIMPLFIED review presented in chapter 3 of my book, "How to Avoid Nearsightedness". You can find this Chapter from my site: www.myopiafree.com Any competent engineer, or scientist (like Dr. Stirling Colgate) can anlyze a box camera. It is simple: Your FREEZE the eye. You assert that all eyes MUST WANT TO BE ZERO, and then you analyize your assumed box camera -- insisting that a refractive state must be exactly zero to be NORMAL. But you missed my point completely. It is easy to answer "optical bench" questions -- except the natural eye never was -- and is not now an "optical bench". However -- you either preceive the natural eye as "dynamic" or you do not. I can hardly blame you for rejecting the concept that the natural eye is dynamic -- since they NEVER teach that at OD college. What they teach you is how to "satisfy" the great mass of the public that walks in off the street with "instant sharpness" produced with a minus (or plus) lens. If fact, if you attempted to do more that this, the public would "reject" you and the preventive method. Yes -- I understand this issue perfectly. But if the issue concerns true-prevention, then from my long experience, the person will have to figure out how to do is successfully BEFORE you put him in a minus lens. Equally when I asked you about the proven effect of a minus-lens contact on an eye -- you totally ignore and evade the question. I can understand why. Any admission that the natural eye "goes negative" from the forced wearing of a minus lens (proven in primates) leads to the conclusion that the minus lens can CREATE the very situation you SOLVE with a minus lens. You refuse to answer the questions I posed -- and I understand why. Any "staight" answers will lead to very serious "trust" problems with the public you now service. But that is the incommensurables nature of our paradigms. I see the natural eye as a sophisticated system. (I wonder if you would agree with THAT statement.) You do not. To me it is intuitively obvious that the natural eye MUST be dynamic, or as Thomas Kuhn said: Kuhn> That is why a law that cannot even be demonstrated to one group of scientists may occasionally seem intuitively obvious to another. So that is why we can not communicate about a basic and very sophisticated eye -- and why the questions I ask (of direct experimental data) are profoundly different that your "questions". Best, Otis Again you are avoiding giving direct answers on direct questions Otis. You are walking around in circles Otis. Why should I go to your spam site when you try to make us believe here (sci.med.vision) your ideas are correct. Provide PROOF right on at this newsgroup Otis your ideas are correct. You asked Dr Judy exact definitions and meanwhile you are not responding on questions asked to proof your ideas. Do you really think you are taking seriously? Jan (normally Dutch spoken) > Dear Jan, > [quoted text clipped - 76 lines] > > Otis > Otis, you are famous for walking out if questions are to difficult or > not possible to be answered by you. [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > Jan (normally Dutch spoken) He also rolls out Kuhn every once in a while to show that he is a scientific revolutionary. Scott Dear Scott, From long conversations with people in medicine, I learned to respect them -- because they have ALMOST no choice but to use a minus lens on the great mass of the public who enter their office. In fact -- in their situation -- I could do NO BETTER than they do. But when you talk about pure OBJECTIVE FACTS, concerning the behavior of the natural eye as a sophisticated system, then the concept of Occum's razor must apply. The more basic concept -- that the natural eye changes its refractive status in a negative direction -- with the application of a -3 diopter lens must apply. And this NATURAL AND NORMAL BEHAVIOR. Scott -- use your brain-power here. I believe you are an "academic". You wish to state that the above is PROVEN TO BE FALSE. Is that your statment. Best, Otis > > Otis, you are famous for walking out if questions are to difficult or > > not possible to be answered by you. [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > > Scott otisbrown@pa.net (Otis Brown) wrote in news:6dbddb9.0407191302.3118bbd6 @posting.google.com: > Is that your statment. > > Best, > > Otis I've made no statement. I just chuckle at the way you compare yourself to a Kuhnian revolutionary. I chuckle for a number of reasons. First and foremost, what you preach is not so far outside the realm that it falls outside the current paradigm-- it's just proving not to be true, at least in humans. If what you propose turns out to be true, the concerned communities will be mildly surprised. They will not have to throw out their entire belief system of visual physiology and start fresh. That throwing out of the belief system--or "paradigm shift" is at the heart of the Kuhnian revolution. This stuff doesn't come up to snuff. If you want me to criticize the science, I will, but if your ego is feeling particularly fragile today, don't read on (I mean it--the statement you seem to be asking for is a pretty brutal). The experiments on primate eyes are on the eyes of DEVELOPING monkeys of a very young age. There is a huge difference in developmental biology and adult phsyiology. Thus, unless you can provide some data that suggests that this can happen in children older than infancy (or adults, as you seem to keep suggesting is true), then what you've been espousing just doesn't apply to humans outside of infancy. I can post paper after paper and textbook after textbook talking about lizards that regenerate all sorts of body parts. This doesn't mean that humans can regrow limbs. Let's say that perhaps there is some glimmer of truth deep in all this. Your science will never show it. From your ideas of keeping snellen charts close at hand, to the data collection techniques of having "motivated students" measuring their own snellen acuity. Before you start squawking about how engineering methods are different from medical science methods, they are not--at least not the measurement techniques you speak of. I tell you this after spending decades in training and practice as a biomedical engineer in an academic environment. I do federally-funded vision related research, I teach undergraduate and graduate engineers physiology from an engineering point of view (many of whom go on to well respected graduate programs in engineering and the life science, medical programs, and industrial R and D positions), and I'm part of a team that just brought our undergraduate program in biomedical engineering through a rigorous ABET accreditation procedure-- successfully, to boot. Trust me, I have some glimmer of understanding of the nexus between engineering and medicine. At the very least, I can claim that I have some understanding about where the major contributors to the ABET accreditation process sit on this issue-- that would be the Biomedical Engineering Society (I was on their Membership Committee for a while, before I let my membership lapse. I'm under some internal pressure to rejoin, but these membership dues add up after a while--The Society for Neuroscience, The Society for the Neural Control of Movement, and the Barany Society all ask for enough dues without adding more), and the IEEE. Your claims that engineering data collection and medical data collection differ just don't hold water. Experimental design and approach might differ between the two communities, but unbiased data collection is at the heart of both science and engineering. Repeatable measurements from multiple sources are key. Your challenges to this community to answer questions regarding a simple exponential decay suggests that you do not quite understand the difference between data and a model, as does your offering of the Flitcroft modeling effort when challenged for data. The data validates the model, not the other way around. Sans validation, the model doesn't hold much meaning. I hope that 100% of my students walk away from my phsyiology class understanding what a model is, but I know they don't, as the concept is not the easiest to grasp in one semester. Of all the criticism I'm offering here, this is one I can let you slide on--many people have the same problem. Last, I see you up on your soapbox, preaching this idea of myopia prevention to a room full of people that are coming to this group for help with real vision-threatening conditions. People who have real visual problems would probably gladly give up one of their eyes if they could put a corrective lens--minus, plus, spherical, cylindrical, or even blank-- in front of their other eye and know that they will be able to see with it at some minimum functional level for their remaining lifespan. I can only imagine what going to sleep at night not knowing how much longer you'll be able to see is like. Frankly, I see your use of this forum as your own personal soapbox as arrogant and belittling to people coming here with real vision threatening problems like retinal degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, retinal tears, and glaucoma. I'd love to see some real data on the public health issues surrounding myopia prevention. Personally, I suspect that its of miniscule concern compared to some of the other visually-related health and other neurological problems that scientists can throw themselves at. To summarize, I think you're off on the magnitude of the small chunk of visual science you're grabbing at, your interpretation of the literature, your scientific approach, your data collection methods, your use of modeling in physiological research, and the level of importance, with respect to public health, of the problems you are talking about. That's my statement, Scott Scott, You are truly a wonder! I run experiments to determine if the fundamental eye is dynamic. It might be, and perhaps it is not. But any decision I make -- or the people who might be making a decision about using the plus FOR PREVENTION ONLY should examine these objective facts. If they determine that these objective-facts do not meet their requirements -- then they should NEVER WORK ON PREVENTION WITH THE PLUS LENS. No harm done. But they might regret the stair-case myopia they develop later, but then they should not "worry" about that issue either. But we all make or own choices. I am curious about your professional background -- if you would care to post it. Best, Otis Engineer > otisbrown@pa.net (Otis Brown) wrote in news:6dbddb9.0407191302.3118bbd6 > @posting.google.com: [quoted text clipped - 96 lines] > That's my statement, > Scott > I run experiments to determine if the > fundamental eye is dynamic. Of course the eye is dynamic as the whole body-mind is. > > I run experiments to determine if the > > fundamental eye is dynamic. > > Of course the eye is dynamic as the whole body-mind is. Dear Rishi, I have found that with a large number of people that our "hearts" are in the right place -- even as our "minds" crash into each other. Amazing! Dr. Bates "intuitive" sense of the eye was correct -- even if his words were not "quite right". But then that is in the nature of "medical" issues. As long as we first "AGREE" that the natural eye is dyanmic, then we can work on that issue. When the objective facts demonstrate with absolute clarity, that the REFRACTIVE STATUS moves in a negative direction when a minus lens is placed on it, then that is PURE SCIENCE. What is really tragic is when some "academic" proceeds to deny OBJECTIVE SCIENTIFIC FACTS TO MY FACE, and then produces a long-winded "story" with NO OBJECTIVE FACTS, and then expects me to BELIEVE HIM!!! Further, when another world-class scientists uses these facts to clear his own vision, then I must say that even in "pure science" there is a "second opinion", and we will have to make a choice between a "stuffed shirt", (he honestly believes his "story") and a very objective scientists like Dr. Stirling Colgate. No one should get on his "high horse" and attempt to tell everyone that "a minus lens has NO EFFECT on the refractive status of the natural eye". It is a demonstratably false statment in pure science. Best, Otis Engineer > No one should get on his "high horse" and attempt > to tell everyone that "a minus lens has NO EFFECT on > the refractive status of the natural eye". Now, Otis, I never said that, and you know it. I just said that you offer no proof that this is the case, and your "proposal" (see, I can use quotation marks in a derogatory fashion, as well) doesn't contain science good enough to show it. Scott >> > I run experiments to determine if the >> > fundamental eye is dynamic. [quoted text clipped - 42 lines] > > Engineer What joke. DrG .........and blah blah blah........ and yet you all continue to engage Otis in his one-concept no-proof zealot-like issue. How many times do you have make the point that he doesn't have one? Have you not anything else better to do? Best, Larry LarryDoc <larrydoc@nospam.yahoodotcom> wrote in news:larrydoc- BAC8F9.20495221072004@news3.west.earthlink.net: > .........and blah blah blah........ > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Larry So, are you saying that Otis is a spammer and that we should treat him like all other spammers, i.e. ignore him and he will go away? Or do you think that his posts sound rational enough that the uninitiated might take them seriously, and on that basis deserve a response, especially when they almost always contain a diatribe against your profession? DrG > So, are you saying that Otis is a spammer and that we should treat him like > all other spammers, i.e. ignore him and he will go away? Or do you think [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > DrG Certainly I appreciate your (plural) desire to undermine his to-the-unititated rational sounding diatribe. I merely suggest a possibly more effective and less time consuming method of dealing with morons and zealots. That is, begin the subject line of each response with a common reference, for example: Otis the zealot: xxxxxxxxxx where xxxxx is the subject line he starts. In the body text of the post, limit comments to one line. Engaging in point-by-point denunciation and damage control is point-less as he always will have a retort or he will simple ignore and post some other BS. I'm only suggesting that we spend more time addressing legitimate vision-related queries and less, or no time with single-issue zealots. Flame wars and nonsense posts tend to foster that kind of activity here and then we loose the interaction with those who we can enjoy substantive dialog. So yes, then I'd say Otis is a spammer. He contributes nothing substantive to the forum and only serves to demean and infuriate with pseudo- science sounding jibberish, Hey, that's a pretty good one-line comment! OK. that's surely enough time spent by me on this. Best, (and meaning that in a supportive and appreciative way) Larry > >> > I run experiments to determine if the > >> > fundamental eye is dynamic. [quoted text clipped - 46 lines] > > DrG Dear DrG, Your arrogance is comming through lout and clear. You consider work on prevention (by pilots) to be a "joke". Apparently you do not give a damn about their long-term visual welfair. Fortunatly some ODs take their responsibility more seriously -- I certainly do. Best, Otis >> >> > I run experiments to determine if the >> >> > fundamental eye is dynamic. [quoted text clipped - 61 lines] > > Otis Oh, so you are once again saying that there is something wrong with my professional ethics because I won't stand silent while you continually make a mockery of the scientific method and medical science? Why, how arrogant of me to challenge you on that basis. I should be ashamed(sarcasm). DrG Dear Scott, Scott> He also rolls out Kuhn every once in a while to show that he is a > scientific revolutionary. Of couse I "roll out" scientific, objective experimental data, but your intellectually blind-mind tells you that you must TOTALLY IGNORE all this scientific data. That is your "gestalt" with Thomas Kuhn describes to a "T". Another word is intellectual stuffed-shirt whose brain has gone dead some time ago, and can only repeat the mantra -- the minus lens has NO EFFECT on the refractive status of the natural eye -- EVER!! Best, Otis Here are the experimental results. I sent Howard Howland a copy of my book. I also talked to him to confirm the absolute results he achieved with the application of a minus lens. Further, other experiments with primate eyes (monkey) showed EXACTLY the same results. In discussions on this topic on sci.med.vision the ODs claim that "these results do not mean anything!!! And they say they are "experts"? Experts about what? Kicking along the method of the last 400 years? Go figure. At some point we must begin thinking for ourselves. But since your " Best, Otis _____ Frank Schaeffel, Adrian Glasser and Howard C. Howland, "Accommodation, Refractive Error and Eye Growth in Chickens", VISION RES., Vol 28, No. 5 pp 639-657, 1988. Pergamon Press. RESULTS: All eyes treated with positive lenses became consistently more positive (hyperopic). Negative lenses produced more negative (myopic) refractions (focal states) in all eyes. In a test of plus/minus lenses on left/right eyes, the eye with the plus lens moved in a positive direction. The eye with a minus lens moved in a minus direction. The control group did not change significantly in any direction. > > Otis, you are famous for walking out if questions are to difficult or > > not possible to be answered by you. [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > > Scott |
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