How to use your eyes / James Elkins.
"I hope this book will inspire every reader to stop and consider things that are...so clearly meaningless that they never seemed worth a second thought.... Grass, the night sky, a postage stamp, a crack in the sidewalk, a shoulder. Ordinary objects of everyday life. But when we look at them--re...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Routledge,
2000.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Contributor biographical information |
| Summary: | "I hope this book will inspire every reader to stop and consider things that are...so clearly meaningless that they never seemed worth a second thought.... Grass, the night sky, a postage stamp, a crack in the sidewalk, a shoulder. Ordinary objects of everyday life. But when we look at them--really look at them--what do we see? In the tradition of John Berger's bestselling Ways of Seeing, James Elkins's How to Use Your Eyes invites us to look at--and maybe to see for first time--the world around us, with breathtaking results. Here are the common artifacts of life, often misunderstood and largely ignored, brought into striking focus. A butterfly's wing pattern encodes its identity. A cloudless sky yields a precise sequence of colors at sunset. A bridge reveals the relationship of a population with its landscape. With the discerning eye of a painter and the zeal of a detective, Elkins also explores complicated things like mandalas, the periodic table, or a hieroglyph,remaking the world into a treasure box of observations--eccentric, ordinary, marvelous. How to Use Your Eyes is a thrilling read evocative of the work of Diane Ackerman and Stephen Jay Gould. It will transform your view of nature and the mind."--Publisher description. |
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| Physical Description: | xi, 258 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-253). |
| ISBN: | 0415922542 9780415922548 |