Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-221) and index.
Introduction: on questioning blindess and what the blind 'see' -- 'Seeing with the hands': Descartes, blindness, and vision -- 'Suppose a man born blind...': cubes and spheres, hands and eyes -- Objects that 'touch'd his eyes': surgical experiments in the recovery of vision -- Voltaire, Buffon, and blindness in France -- The testimony of blind men: Diderot's Lettre -- Reading with the fingers: tactile signs and the possibilities for a language of touch -- Seeing with the tongue: sight through other means -- Blindness, empathy, and 'feeling seeing': literary accounts of blind experience.
0
This book seeks to answer why there has there been a persistent fascination by the sighted, including philosophers, poets and the public, in what the blind see'.