Perception is not Equal

A falconer friend of mine has this, seemingly, uncanny ability to visualize flights on prey more fully than I can. He seems to be able to recall details of these, relatively, fast action pursuits with remarkable clarity. We, recently, had a discussion about this on my listserv, and, I remembered doing some research on perception for my Master's thesis as it pertains to nature writing, in which, I quoted V. B. Montcastle's article titled, "The View from Within: Pathways to the Study of Perception," published in the John Hopkins Medical Journal. He writes:

"Each of us believes himself to live directly within the world that surrounds him, to sense the objects and events precisely, to live in a real and current time. I assert that these are perceptual illusions, for each of us confronts the world from a brain linked to what is 'out there' by a few million fragile sensory nerve fibers. These are our only information channels, our life-lines to reality. These sensory nerve fibers are not high-fidelity recorders, for they accentuate certain stimulus features, neglect others. The central neuron is a story-teller with regard to the afferent nerve fibers, and he is never completely trustworthy, allowing distortions of quality and measure, within a strained but isomorphic spatial relation between 'outside' and 'inside.' Sensation is an abstraction , not replication, of the real world."

A little more research on human perception has left me awestruck by it all. Vision is incredibly complex, and the speed in which the brain is able to process this sensory information is absolutely remarkable. It is clear to me that people, like my friend, can, in fact, see things more fully than other people; not only that, but, they may see things differently than I do, because each of us have our own internal biases, in terms of reality (what we see), and, some of us have better perception than others based upon our physiology, just like some are better at math, or writing, or whatever. As much as we might think otherwise, perception does not appear to be equal, we all have innate limitations, like anything else. So, there really are "hawkeyes" out there. And, since perceptions of "reality," or, in this case, flights of hawks, are a replication, and can vary depending upon internal differences between individuals; and, since these perceptions dictate, to a great extent what is written, defining these flights can indeed be varied.