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Our discussion in class reminded me of a passage about sight that I read in another class in Pilgrim of Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard.  She mentions and quotes from another book, Space and Sight by Marius von Senden, which describes the experience of people with cataracts, previously been blind from birth, once the cataracts was removed by an operation.  She writes:

‘For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning: “The girl went through the experience that we all go through and forget, the moment we are born.  She saw, but it did not mean anything but a lot of different kinds of brightness.” Again, “I asked the patient what he could see; he answered that he saw an extensive field of light, in which everything appeared dull, confused, and in motion.  He could not distinguish objects.”  Another patient saw “nothing but a confusion of forms and colors.” When a newly sighted girl saw photographs and paintings, she asked, “‘Why do they put those dark marks all over them?’ ‘Those aren’t dark marks,’ her mother explained, ‘those are shadows.  That is one of the ways the eye knows that things have shape.  If it were not for shadows many things would look flat.’ ‘Well, that’s how things do look,’ Joan answered.  ‘Everything looks flat with dark patches.’”  […]  In general the newly sighted see the world as a dazzle of color-patches.’ (28-29)