Why is it that I am not able to read a book without moving my eyes if the entirety of the page is within my field of view? Why do I have to center my eyes on an object to observe it fully? And why is it that I am still able to view changes in surroundings in the edges of my field of vision despite there being supposedly no way to focus on them from that angle?
Is it due to our brain’s capacity to absorb a finite amount of visual information at a given moment or is it a physical flaw in the structure of our eyes?
I think a useful way to think about it is that your perceptual brain isn’t in the business of making you see, or hear, or anything like that - it’s in the business of giving you an accurate-enough-to-be-useful idea of what’s around you. You see the world as being sharp and stable and consistent even though the literal visual signals going from your eyes to your brain aren’t… because the world is sharp and stable and consistent. Or at least it’s enough those things that it was useful for the brain to evolve to generate that specific perceptual experience. The signals coming from your eye are just (some of) the information the brain uses to generate that experience.
