Introduction: Too Many Eyes Spoil the View

When William was young, his favorite insect was the dragonfly.  I remember a vacation on the east coast of Florida where one of these deft creatures landed on William’s nose.   Everybody around him took off.  He walked around for over an hour, face towards the sky, modeling his catch.  There existed a quasi communion between them.  William and the insect were amazingly comfortable, one with the other.  A highly unlikely pair of comrades.   Maybe somehow they had an understanding that each shared the other’s secret, a secret about sight, about vision and perceptions of the world around them. 

A dragon fly has huge eyes that bulge out of the sides of its head.  They’re called cluster eyes.  You can’t miss them.  They are both frightening and slightly repulsive to the non-insect lover. They are oriented upward and to the sides so they don’t miss a thing.  These monster apparatus are composed of thousands of six-sided miniscule lenses which are each independent of the other and yet work together to give the insect incredibly detailed perception that can distinguish not only color and brightness, but is able to track electromagnetic waves, minute, almost unperceivable motion, and detect extremely rapid movement.  This is due to the fact that certain zones of the lenses are flattened and can let in huge amounts of light which greatly increases acuity.  The more light that comes into these lenses, the higher resolution of minute details. 

This highly precise sight is specially developed for the speed by which the insect travels.

Dragonflies are really fast.  In fact, they are faster than most other insects.  There are very few human beings who can boast about having caught a dragonfly with their bare hands.  They flit around effortlessly darting and swooping and twirling in mid air, zipping back and forth with amazing precision.   Their trajectory is not foreseeable by any mode or means.   Not only can they zip and zoom, but they can also hover in mid air, like a helicopter.  And as if that wasn’t enough, a dragonfly in this static position, can go from zero to top speed in a fraction of a second.  You could never sneak up on one of these little beasts from behind, or from anywhere for that matter.  Couple their speed with their incredible eyesight and you have one formidable adversary for an entity which is lower on the food chain.  

A dragonfly’s sight is perfectly adapted to its life in the fast lane.  Its ability to perceive the least detail of movement is key to its capacity to hone in on its prey at high speed.  A dragonfly is able to spot and catch a gnat in mid air at 35 mph because of its ability to see the effects of the movement of the tiny insect in the light patterns.  This is one aspect of reality in at which the dragonfly is expert. 

Interestingly enough, as state of the art these blinkers may be they have their limitations.  Although they possess a highly developed ability to see details hardly perceived by other insects, they have surprisingly poor image resolution.   Dragonflies do not see the design of common everyday objects with precision.   To catch the gnat does not necessarily mean to see it.  The dragonfly sees the effects of the gnat and not the form.  In fact, the details of any given image are at best fuzzy.  Life is a blur. 

I have spent the last fifteen years of William’s life wondering how accurate the image resolution of the world around him is.  Sure, William possesses an incredibly detailed perception of the world from a scientific point of view.  Even though he was very slow to read and write and painfully behind in communication skills, something in his mind’s eye let in great amounts of information.    He somehow gathered scientific knowledge at an amazing rate.   He could explain the difference between “animal, mineral, vegetable” (a guessing game we used to play at the dinner table) at the age of four.  He could distinguish a female mosquito from a male at the age of five as well as give a mini-lecture on these distinctions.  He is a quick thinker, able to talk circles around his audience when discussing string theory, time warps, co-existing dimensions in time and space, and the notion of infinity, but when it comes to basic image resolution concerning everyday life, well that’s not so clear.  What about watching Sesame Street, going to a neighbor’s birthday party, greeting an acquaintance in a public place, or holding the door for his sister?   Only in the past years has it become evident to me that his image resolution in these areas of the common was blurry.  Maybe William’s perception of the world was too acute, too accurate.  A profusion of detailed information seemed to be constantly inundating his mind and so much so that it was difficult for him to simply accept the common norms of society without giving them a run for their money.

Perhaps, like the ability of the eye of a dragonfly to take in light, William’s psyche was able to receive an abundance of information concerning the details of life which skewed his vision of the conventional.