The Art of Looking: What 11 Experts Teach Us about Seeing Our Familiar City Block with New Eyes ~ Brain Pickings | :: The 4th Era :: | Scoop.it

by Maria Popova

 

“The art of seeing has to be learned,” Marguerite Duras reverberates — and itcan be learned, as cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz invites us to believe in her breathlessly wonderful On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes (public library) — a record of her quest to walk around a city block with eleven different “experts,” from an artist to a geologist to a dog, and emerge with fresh eyes mesmerized by the previously unseen fascinations of a familiar world. It is undoubtedly one of the most stimulating books of the year, if not the decade, and the most enchanting thing I’ve read in ages"