Seeing involves not only the eyes but the brain. Each of your retinas captures a two dimensional projection of light reflected or emitted by things in three dimensional space. Assuming you have two (or more) working retinas, your brain combines multiple two dimensional images into a three dimensional model of the space in front of or around you.
In four dimensional space I imagine you’d need a three-dimensional retina (not a two dimensional retina wrapped around a three-dimensional volume, rather a three dimensional organ filled with photoreceptors and nerves connecting each of them to the brain) surrounded by a four-dimensional lens to focus incoming light rays. My brain, having only experienced three dimensional space, can’t picture a four dimensional lens, but that’s what I think it would take.
The back of our eyes have screens on them screens that gather up the light going into the eyeball (this is how our vision works). These screens are flat. So each eye is 2D. But since both of the eyes are at a different position, our brain can take those two flat pictures and figure out what the 3D world looks like. This usually works, but since it is guessing a bit, sometimes we make mistakes–this is how a lot of optical illusions work.
Latest Answers