An experienced physicist guides us towards an understanding of visual phenomena based on our direct experience.

Physical optics has increasingly removed itself from immediate visual experience, focusing instead on abstract explanatory theories and the measurements of sophisticated instruments. It is fair to say that sensory experience has become the stepchild of our modern scientific worldview.

However, failure to actively engage the phenomena leaves us with an impoverished relationship with the world around us. Acutely aware of the importance of sensory experience for deepening and enlivening our scientific understanding of nature, Georg Maier devoted much of his career as a physicist to studying the visual world. In this groundbreaking book, he guides us toward an experiential understanding of visual phenomena.