How the perception of shadows, studied by vision scientists and visual artists, reveals the inner workings of the visual system. In
The Visual World of Shadows, Roberto Casati and Patrick Cavanagh examine how the perception of shadows, as studied by vision scientists and visual artists, reveals the inner workings of the visual system. Shadows are at once a massive problem for vision--which must distinguish them from objects or material features of objects--and a resource, signaling the presence, location, shape, and size of objects.
Casati and Cavanagh draw up an inventory of information retrievable from shadows, showing their amazing variety. They present an overview of the visual system, distinguishing between
measurement and
inference. They discuss the shadow
mission, the work done by the visual brain to parse, and perhaps discard, the information from shadows; shadow
ownership, the association of a shadow with the object that casts it; shadow
labeling, the visual system's ability to tell shadows from nonshadows; and the shadow
concept, our knowledge about shadows as a category. Casati and Cavanagh then apply the theoretical apparatus they have developed for shadows to other phenomena: illumination, reflection, and transparency. Finally, they examine the art of the shadow, paying tribute to artists' exploration of shadow, analyzing a series of artworks (reproduced in color) from a rich and fascinating art historical corpus.
如何透過視覺科學家和視覺藝術家的研究，了解陰影的感知揭示視覺系統的內部運作。
在《陰影的視覺世界》中，羅伯托·卡薩提（Roberto Casati）和帕特里克·卡瓦納（Patrick Cavanagh）探討了陰影的感知如何揭示視覺系統的內部運作。陰影對於視覺來說既是一個巨大的挑戰——視覺系統必須將其與物體或物體的物質特徵區分開來——同時也是一種資源，能夠指示物體的存在、位置、形狀和大小。
卡薩提和卡瓦納列出了從陰影中可檢索的信息清單，展示了其驚人的多樣性。他們提供了視覺系統的概述，區分了「測量」和「推斷」。他們討論了陰影的「任務」，即視覺大腦解析並可能丟棄來自陰影的信息的工作；陰影的「擁有權」，即將陰影與投射它的物體聯繫起來；陰影的「標籤」，即視覺系統區分陰影與非陰影的能力；以及陰影的「概念」，即我們對陰影作為一個類別的知識。接著，卡薩提和卡瓦納將他們為陰影發展的理論工具應用於其他現象：照明、反射和透明度。最後，他們檢視陰影的藝術，向藝術家對陰影的探索致敬，分析了一系列來自豐富而迷人的藝術史文獻的藝術作品（以彩色重現）。
Roberto Casati is Director of the Jean Nicod Institute and Professor at EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris. He is the coauthor of
The Visual World of Shadows,
Parts and Places, and
Holes and Other Superficialities (all MIT Press).
Patrick Cavanagh is a Senior Research Fellow at Glendon College of York University, Toronto, and Research Professor at Dartmouth College.
羅伯托·卡薩提（Roberto Casati）是讓·尼科德研究所的所長，並且是巴黎社會科學高等研究院（EHESS）的教授。他是《陰影的視覺世界》（The Visual World of Shadows）、《部分與地方》（Parts and Places）以及《洞與其他表面現象》（Holes and Other Superficialities）（均由麻省理工學院出版社出版）的共同作者。
帕特里克·卡瓦納（Patrick Cavanagh）是多倫多約克大學格倫登學院的高級研究員，並且是達特茅斯學院的研究教授。
