Intangible Concepts To A Blind Person

September 10, 2013 7:36 AM

Tommy Edison, who has been blind since birth, explains his perception of things that are intangible including the sun, sky, fog, Great Wall of China, Grand Canyon, and space. [slyt | via]
posted by quin (14 comments total)

That's amazing stuff...and he has an awesome laugh.
posted by jquinby at 7:47 AM on September 10, 2013

Is it true that all he feels is "warm" when the sun rises? I sense so many more things than that... Humidity and moisture, the smell changes from pre-dawn to dawn to day. I'm not sure of the top of my head if there's more than that, but I imagine I could think of it if I were *in* it and experiencing it. But is that conditioning? Is it related to vision? Am I more imaginative? Is my memory wrong? I don't know, but that's sad if all you get is "warmer" from a sunrise or "cooler" from a sunset....
posted by symbioid at 7:51 AM on September 10, 2013

Is it true that all he feels is "warm" when the sun rises? I sense so many more things than that... Humidity and moisture, the smell changes from pre-dawn to dawn to day. [...] But is that conditioning? Is it related to vision? Am I more imaginative? Is my memory wrong?

Or maybe he just lives in a drier climate than you do.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:04 AM on September 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

What color is the sun? Same color as the daughter!

That literally made my day and it's only 9 a.m. He's amazing. Great find!
posted by mochapickle at 8:10 AM on September 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure of the top of my head if there's more than that, but I imagine I could think of it if I were *in* it and experiencing it. But is that conditioning? Is it related to vision?

Possibly you associate those things as being related because you can see the sun. To him, perhaps, they're distinct experiences.
posted by mhoye at 8:34 AM on September 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Enjoyed this, thanks. Made me think about all of those "I am asleep and I feel like I'm falling" sensations where you don't really know where you are (since you're asleep and are falling through made up space). I could imagine a world without the Great Wall of China more easily than I could imagine a world without jumping. Will check out more of these, thanks.
posted by jessamyn at 8:50 AM on September 10, 2013

He's a happy guy, but his teachers and others are not good at explaining stuff. Especially if they're giving him that "visible from space" line.

Personally, I'm not afraid of falling. It's landing that scares me.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 9:00 AM on September 10, 2013

These concepts would not be so intangible if someone would 3D-print miniature sculptures of photographs and let him feel the Great Wall of China.
posted by CynicalKnight at 9:43 AM on September 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

Yeah, CynicalKnight, or somebody could sit beside him and together they could clasp paper and pencil and draw a picture.
posted by notyou at 10:14 AM on September 10, 2013

"You see there's all these things I know about, I just don't know what they are."

That made me laugh. I could say the same thing about a lot of things I've never seen either. I like the way this guy thinks.
posted by three blind mice at 10:49 AM on September 10, 2013

My first thought was "Ask a Mongol if the Great Wall is intangible" but I think I get it.

I think I get it because of the inclusion of "outer space" in there. I don't think even sighted people entirely get what outer space is, it's at a scale and magnitude that you can't intuitively grasp.

And similarly, if the grand canyon is a mile deep, a sighted person can look at it and intuitively grasp how vast it is. Without sight you're only going to directly experience something in chunks that are arms-breadth apart. You can know intellectually that a mile-deep canyon is 10 times deeper than a 500 foot canyon, but both are just very large things well outside the scale of sizes you can directly experience, like knowing Jupiter's orbit is 5 times further from the sun than Earth's orbit.
posted by RobotHero at 10:59 AM on September 10, 2013

Tommy Edison is fascinating, he is good at explaining blind life to the sighted. I've been subscribing to his YouTube channel since I saw this post on him using money. His Blind Film Critic channel is good too. He is funny and insightful about things that I take for granted.
posted by I am the Walrus at 11:06 AM on September 10, 2013

I would say that experiencing the Grand Canyon is like eating a layer cake where each layer is a different flavor and there's thousands of layers.
posted by larrybob at 12:13 PM on September 10, 2013 [4 favorites]

Now Tommy Edison has questions for Sighted People.
posted by larrybob at 10:47 AM on October 2, 2013