Popular lectures on scientific subjects : $b Second series, with an autobiography of the author — John Shaqi
Popular lectures on scientific subjects : $b Second series, with an autobiography of the authorHelmholtz, Hermann von
Science
Popular lectures on scientific subjects : $b Second series, with an autobiography of the author
Helmholtz, Hermann von
Science; Universities and colleges -- Germany
Now we can obtain exactly similar images of our real world, if we
look through a large convex lens of corresponding negative focal
length, or even through a pair of convex spectacles if ground somewhat
prismatically to resemble pieces of one continuous larger lens. With
these, like the convex mirror, we see remote objects as if near to us,
the most remote appearing no farther distant than the focus of the
lens. In going about with this lens before the eyes, we find that the
objects we approach dilate exactly in the manner I have described for
pseudospherical space. Now any one using a lens, were it even so strong
as to have a focal length of only sixty inches, to say nothing of a
hundred feet, would perhaps observe for the first moment that he saw
objects brought nearer. But after going about a little the illusion
would vanish, and in spite of the false images he would judge of the
distances rightly. We have every reason to suppose that what happens in
a few hours to any one beginning to wear spectacles would soon enough
be experienced in pseudospherical space. In short, pseudospherical
space would not seem to us very strange, comparatively speaking; we
should only at first be subject to illusions in measuring by eye the
size and distance of the more remote objects.
There would be illusions of an opposite description, if, with eyes
practised to measure in Euclid’s space, we entered a spherical space
of three dimensions. We should suppose the more distant objects to be
more remote and larger than they are, and should find on approaching
them that we reached them more quickly than we expected from their
appearance. But we should also see before us objects that we can fixate
only with diverging lines of sight, namely, all those at a greater
distance from us than the quadrant of a great circle. Such an aspect of
things would hardly strike us as very extraordinary, for we can have
it even as things are if we place before the eye a slightly prismatic
glass with the thicker side towards the nose: the eyes must then become
divergent to take in distant objects. This excites a certain feeling
of unwonted strain in the eyes, but does not perceptibly change the
appearance of the objects thus seen. The strangest sight, however, in
the spherical world would be the back of our own head, in which all
visual lines not stopped by other objects would meet again, and which
must fill the extreme background of the whole perspective picture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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